The saddest thing about you being you and not being me is that you probably do not enjoy “my” music nearly as much as I do. Which is sad:)
For years I avoided streaming. It just seemed wrong. Then I rented a car that didn’t even come with a CD player. What to do? Don’t laugh-- I just learned that you can listen to music in your car with your phone. Who knew. Now, two months later, I am all about streaming, though I do my best to buy real product when and where I can. I am most taken the Bandcamp model that allows me to purchase music from the artists, and get a download.
For the purpose of sharing, most of these links take you to Spotify accounts, a few to Bandcamp. A few more are available through Youtube. Just press the green words.
Selections are in no specific order.
1) Josh Garrels: Chrysaline (2019)
Chrysaline on Youtube
Brooding, melodic, techno-coustic fusion,
A perfect storm of harmonic glow, masculinity, and spiritual vitality.
I hang out on a few Facebook groups where we celebrate the glory days of Jesus Music. People often ask if anybody today is creating music as innovative, unfettered and culturally relevant as they did in the early 70s? I say… Do you listen to Josh Garrels?For years I avoided streaming. It just seemed wrong. Then I rented a car that didn’t even come with a CD player. What to do? Don’t laugh-- I just learned that you can listen to music in your car with your phone. Who knew. Now, two months later, I am all about streaming, though I do my best to buy real product when and where I can. I am most taken the Bandcamp model that allows me to purchase music from the artists, and get a download.
For the purpose of sharing, most of these links take you to Spotify accounts, a few to Bandcamp. A few more are available through Youtube. Just press the green words.
Selections are in no specific order.
1) Josh Garrels: Chrysaline (2019)
Chrysaline on Youtube
Brooding, melodic, techno-coustic fusion,
A perfect storm of harmonic glow, masculinity, and spiritual vitality.
2) Dennis Hendricksen, Kari Heise:
Swimming in the Heart of the Sun
Swimming on BandCamp
Ethereal Sacred music fit for a Cathedral streaming with light.
Dennis Hendricksen, a Canadian Lutheran Pastor is a musician's musician, known to me for his jazz-fusion and ambient instrumental works. Swimming in the Heart of the Sun, with sublime vocalist Kari House showcases Hendricksen in new territory. The lyrics are founded in the the Lord’s Prayer, but I wouldn’t know. I don't understand Latin.
3) Jeff Johnson-Phil Keaggy - Cappadocia (2019)
Ambient-instrumental-middle eastern-transcendent-jazz featuring Guitarist Phil Keaggy and Key-Man Jeff Johnson. See my extended review here.
It’s hard to believe this album has only been out a year. I have lived in it like few others. I especially enjoy the memory of playing it loud in the car while tooling around with my photo-bud Casey Crocker as we searched for Arkansas waterfalls.
4) Phil Keaggy and Rex Paul: Illumination
Big Sound, Arena Rock with a melodic twist from Guitar-titans Phil Keaggy and Rex Paul.
I did not know the name Rex Paul before this collaboration. Now I do and I am thankful, not only for the union, but for Rex’s stand alone work. And Keaggy, could this guy really be nearing 70. He sounds like a kid.
I often tell people that I prefer my music at the edges. Give me low production chamber orchestra, old school country… live jazz, or even a dash of punk. Skip the high production middle. Now comes an album with layers of production, and I must eat my words. This music is just so lush, so jubilant so dazzling… it makes me sing. And play a mighty air guitar.
HUGE: In the last year Keaggy has put all but a few commercial releases (owned by others) up on BandCamp. I don't know if he senses the finish line, or is just being gracious, but you can now listen to over 100 Keaggy products (including outtakes, live demos, and quality studio recordings right here.
5) Terry Scott Taylor (Bedroom Demos Collection)
Veteran Jesus music grandpappy Terry Scott Taylor -- front-man for the Daniel Amos Band, and contributing member of The Lost Dogs (Alt Country/Americana) and the Swirling Eddies (Experimental Weirdness) has been described as having more creativity in his little pinky than the rest of Christendom put together,
A few years back Terry Scott decided to offer loyal fans a self-recorded EP a month - presumably until the Lord Comes back or the wife kicks him out of the bedroom. He is now at chapter 28, each EP with 5 tracks.
Samples: (May require you to be part of Band Camp to hear)
Colored By (1981)
Colored By (2019)
Shadow Catcher (1986) Youtube.
Shadow Catcher (2019)
6) Bruce Cockburn: Crowing Ignites (2019)
Acoustic Guitar with elements.
Folk-rocking wordsmith Bruce Cockburn has always played a mean guitar, but here he leaves the voice and and amps behind for a collection of deeply textured instrumental ballads. I am not sure how music sounds Canadian, but you can hear the sleet and sting.Bells of Gethsemane is as powerful as the title suggests.
7) JJ Heller: I dream of You, Volume 2 (instrumental) (2019)
Princess-fairy renditions of essential songs, minus the fairy princess. So this is weird. Take a woman with a surreal, fairy princess voice. Let her make a delightful 2017 album in which she covers essential songs, with her fairy-princess voice... then, reintroduce the same album, minus her voice. (The audio landscape behind her voice is both lush and magical.)
Truth is I like both. Hear JJ with voice here. As a matter of style, I gravitate to the chilly November day with bitter-coffee side of the audio spectrum, but once in a while I find I need... Life, breath and Spring. JJ offers antidote to all in me that is cold and dark.
8) Heath McNease: Be Clean Again (2019)
(Sanctified white-boy rap, modern pop and old school folk, all in one dynamic conglomeration)
This is for the kid in me. Youngster Heath McNease is nothing if not diverse. I was first made aware of his music in 2012 when he released “The Weight of Glory: Songs inspired by the works of CS Lewis.” That caught my attention. Since then I have learned that Heath, a youthful rapper, has ventured into every more diverse soundscape, ever courting his first love. But hidden behind that voice and style. A mighty writer.
9) Sara Groves: Joy of Every Longing Heart 2019
Piano driven contemplations of Advent.
I haven't made a best-of list in years. If I had, Sara would have made my list every year she releases a new album. Especially these last years in which she is pushing into ever delightful states of understatement. It's not depressed, It is subdued. I love her marvelous restraint and brooding blues. Pull out the Earl Grey. Music of incredible richness and depth.
10) The Porter's Gate: Neighbor Songs (2019)
This is the wrong graphic, but it gives a better sense of the dynamic urban worship experience that is Porter's Gate. Truth is, I just discovered them. Like ten minutes ago. Other Kirkwood favorites, Josh Garrels, Liz Vice, and Audrey Assad contribute to mix. I am living in and loving this music. For more info see:
11) Charlie Peacock Lil’ Willie (2019)
Warm, folk-jazz story song. A tribute to the author’s Dad.
(Album on Youtube) Is there anything that Charlie Peacock cannot sing or produce? Just when I have him pegged he switches gears and tries something new. Lil’ Willie is as warm, supple, and (deceptively) simple as CP's earlier music can be roaring, rapid and complex.
If you want a quick lesson in contrasts, try these links.
Charlie Peacock, Experience (on Youtube)
Charlie Peacock, Wouldn’t Leave Love Alone (2019) Youtube
Note, while listening to this album on Spotify, I came in contact with some tracks that were attributed to Charlie Peacock, but didn't sound like him. Ever the collaborator, Charlie has teamed up with a range of individuals to produce music that is ever different and evolving. Scroll the bottom of the Spotify list to hear some of Charlie’s new audio dallies. Funk, Chamber Orchestra, it’s all there.
12) Kanye West: Jesus is King
Quirky black gospel (mass choir) and rap fusion.
I can’t believe what I just wrote. KANYE West. I did not like Kanye before. I am not yet sure I like him yet. But I am simply amazed that a man, once a slave to self and sensuality, is now singing the unironic praises of Jesus. My sense. A few of these tunes don’t work. (Closed on Sunday) While a few are just so incredible, both for what they say, how they sound, and who is now singing them, that all I can do is praise God… for His irony.
Bonus
Sunday Service Choir: Jesus is Born (12/25/2019)The severe and dense layered vocals of the Sunday Service Mass Choir, remind me strangely of sound-scape I associate with Handel’s Messiah. Apart from the sheer otherworldliness of the sound, the most surprising thing about this recording may be that Kanye West backed the work, then left his name off the project! That, and the fact that it came out when he said it would. On the Money Christmas Day 2019.
13) Andrew Peterson - Behold the Lamb of God
(20 year touring anniversary remake)
Symphonic-folk
14) Pierce Pettis: Father’s Son (2019)
(Muscled folk, Songwriter extraordinaire)
It’s been a few years since I’ve heard from Pettis, is voice is starting to breakdown, blister and flake, which makes it all the more like a beautiful ruin.
15) Bill Mallonee: Lead on Kindly Light (Bandcamp)
Alt country-campfire-beatlesque rouge Americana, 23 song Double CD extravaganza
Bill Mallonee, with over 70 (!) Albums under his belt, has been in the “Autumn” of his life for at least the last decade. And as he gets closer to the down-dark winter close out stage, he seems set on getting EVERYTHING out of his system. Good for us, he has lots of important things to yet to say, and plenty of new ways to say it. Funny, I am hearing some youthful play in this recording that hearkens to the spring.
*Bill has added: The formal release of "Lead On, Kindly Light" will be in Spring 2020;
What you have here is a "soft" release to those who helped us fund the recording via Kickstarter & website pre-orders...
That said, now is a great time to pre-order!
16) Audrey Assad: Peace
Peace is ostensibly a Christmas release. I could listen to this all year. Could Audrey be gifted with one of the more sublime voices in universe. (Yes.)
Let me just say. I don't get the graphic. Unless it is meant to contrast two realities. Dysfunction, Dissonance and Distress against real Peace, despite the presence of Devilish D's. (Disunion, disharmony, Diabolical, Dead, Drastic, Decaying, Discombobulated, Dysentery, Disaster.... Hmmm .there seems to be a lot of them.)
Whatever is going on behind the Distortion in the the photo, your heart will dine in splendor with Peace.
*
I am still mulling on what I think of Audrey's re-write of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Something gained. Something lost.
----
Works created before 2019, but only recently discovered by me.
17) Pat Terry: How Hard it is to Fly (2018)
Curmudgeon folk-rock.
One time Jesus Music veteran, now a tad more cryptic (and not really happy with current politics) still intoxicated by miracle.
Favorite pick: Sky Full of Stars.
18) Crowder: I know a Ghost (2018)
Catch the Creol and Diesel soaked vibe in this smoky You-tube video rendition of Wild Fire.
19) Liz Vice: Save Me (2018)
If you watched the Crowder Video above, you heard Liz)
What can I say. I wish everyone listened to Liz as a way of life. Soul with Heart.
20) Sandra McCracken: Songs from the Valley (2018)
I would not wish the emotional and spiritual pain that Sandra has known these last years on anyone, culminating in a very public divorce. I can only be thankful she continues to hang on to, and celebrate the God who holds.
