Steve Stockman uses 'Break The Silence' to write a short essay on modern worship music...
Hey, this is a review of Break The Silence from Steve Stockman...let us know what you think...(This is taken from Stocki's website 'Rhythm Of Redemption' -http://www.stocki.ni.org/).
Team JPB
Stocki uses the new album by the Johnny Parks Band to write a short essay on modern worship music... he finds Break The Silence as a rare gem in such a genre...
Break The Silence stands out from the cluttered crowd of worship albums and is spiritually more invigorating and artistically more courageous than anything that the worship industry has done in many years. Sitting closer to Delirious in the hard edged rock sound Parks, mostly with his wife Cathy and band-mate Claire Hamilton, writes songs that do more than the self indulgent tickle of most other CDs in the genre. There are layers of theology and challenge as well as prayer and praise. The energy of the music gives that adrenalin rush that U2’s October album spiritualised back in the day and the general vitality gives you the disposition of wanting to change the world. Not enough worship music drives you out to serve the world and this one does.
After laying out a theology where Our God Is Mighty and a Rescuer, a God transcendent and at the same time imminent in the incarnation and redemption, the album then does another thing that is rare in the genre, earths it in specifics. For this album that means applying the belief in this God and redemption to the Northern Irish situation where The Parks Band live and ply their trade. The Troubles Are Over has an Irish soundscape that again adds musical shade the song celebrates the moment of grace that has arrived without forgetting the cost of the past; Walls and Freedom ‘Let’s Go’ stay on the theme. The album ends in a more reflective mood with a co-write with Tim Hughes based on Psalm 63, Lord Of All The Earth, a chance for the talented Claire Hamilton to take centre stage on Draw Near Us Lord and another highlight the closing Walk Beside Me Jesus. Songs like this last one are more than necessary in modern Church services. Too often if you are not victorious and blessed and feeling almost totally sanctified and omniscient you feel a little inferior in your soul in the midst of an arms-outstretched smiling throng. Walk Beside Me Jesus admits “I feel so far from my redemption/Doubts assail my peace of mind…” Such vulnerable honesty is again too rare in the modern canon of congregational songs.
All my criticisms of modern worship are simply absent. There are no romantic songs to a Jesus who is more a girlfriend than a revolutionary, (indeed live Parks is doing a cover of Steve Earle’s Revolution which seems way out of place in any south east of England repertoire!), it is never self indulgent and it doesn’t fall into that bland sound that seems to give the manufactured sheen to worship music. When commercialism takes the place of function it destroys God’s potent intention for the arts and this has been seen nowhere more disastrously than in the world of worship music. The Parks Band is attempting, against the grain, to bring art back into the art of praise. It is not the amount of people singing or the quantity of product sold that will give God’s heart delight. God wants our souls, our gifts, our imaginations. The offering that has been reached to him on CD and sadly therefore in our recent hymn books must seem bland and inane to a God of such creative force and so full of surprise. Parks is a songwriter who could have been a successful musician in the mainstream. Fronting a band in his late teens with Iain Archer Johnny Parks musical and writing credentials sneek through the dumbing down demandedness of worship labels and gives a bristling, bright brand of spiritual engagement. It rocks, it makes theology into poetry and it localises the experience of worship into a context that gives authenticity to the experience.
No doubt, it is sadly inevitable in the industry he is in, Parks has had to compromise in places. There are one or two lines that seem a little cheap cliché. Break The Silence does not have the artistic courage or spiritual vulnerability of Parks’ independent debut album Nomads Welcome. But Parks and his band have created something unique in spite of the pressures of the monotonous regime of the industry and there is a feeling that perhaps they could develop in even more exciting ways. Oh for a visionary to take this band’s faith and ability and create something that God would be proud of.
Steve Stockman
Review taken from Stocki's website 'Rhythms Of Redemption' - http://www.stocki.ni.org/
Team JPB
Stocki uses the new album by the Johnny Parks Band to write a short essay on modern worship music... he finds Break The Silence as a rare gem in such a genre...
Break The Silence stands out from the cluttered crowd of worship albums and is spiritually more invigorating and artistically more courageous than anything that the worship industry has done in many years. Sitting closer to Delirious in the hard edged rock sound Parks, mostly with his wife Cathy and band-mate Claire Hamilton, writes songs that do more than the self indulgent tickle of most other CDs in the genre. There are layers of theology and challenge as well as prayer and praise. The energy of the music gives that adrenalin rush that U2’s October album spiritualised back in the day and the general vitality gives you the disposition of wanting to change the world. Not enough worship music drives you out to serve the world and this one does.
After laying out a theology where Our God Is Mighty and a Rescuer, a God transcendent and at the same time imminent in the incarnation and redemption, the album then does another thing that is rare in the genre, earths it in specifics. For this album that means applying the belief in this God and redemption to the Northern Irish situation where The Parks Band live and ply their trade. The Troubles Are Over has an Irish soundscape that again adds musical shade the song celebrates the moment of grace that has arrived without forgetting the cost of the past; Walls and Freedom ‘Let’s Go’ stay on the theme. The album ends in a more reflective mood with a co-write with Tim Hughes based on Psalm 63, Lord Of All The Earth, a chance for the talented Claire Hamilton to take centre stage on Draw Near Us Lord and another highlight the closing Walk Beside Me Jesus. Songs like this last one are more than necessary in modern Church services. Too often if you are not victorious and blessed and feeling almost totally sanctified and omniscient you feel a little inferior in your soul in the midst of an arms-outstretched smiling throng. Walk Beside Me Jesus admits “I feel so far from my redemption/Doubts assail my peace of mind…” Such vulnerable honesty is again too rare in the modern canon of congregational songs.
All my criticisms of modern worship are simply absent. There are no romantic songs to a Jesus who is more a girlfriend than a revolutionary, (indeed live Parks is doing a cover of Steve Earle’s Revolution which seems way out of place in any south east of England repertoire!), it is never self indulgent and it doesn’t fall into that bland sound that seems to give the manufactured sheen to worship music. When commercialism takes the place of function it destroys God’s potent intention for the arts and this has been seen nowhere more disastrously than in the world of worship music. The Parks Band is attempting, against the grain, to bring art back into the art of praise. It is not the amount of people singing or the quantity of product sold that will give God’s heart delight. God wants our souls, our gifts, our imaginations. The offering that has been reached to him on CD and sadly therefore in our recent hymn books must seem bland and inane to a God of such creative force and so full of surprise. Parks is a songwriter who could have been a successful musician in the mainstream. Fronting a band in his late teens with Iain Archer Johnny Parks musical and writing credentials sneek through the dumbing down demandedness of worship labels and gives a bristling, bright brand of spiritual engagement. It rocks, it makes theology into poetry and it localises the experience of worship into a context that gives authenticity to the experience.
No doubt, it is sadly inevitable in the industry he is in, Parks has had to compromise in places. There are one or two lines that seem a little cheap cliché. Break The Silence does not have the artistic courage or spiritual vulnerability of Parks’ independent debut album Nomads Welcome. But Parks and his band have created something unique in spite of the pressures of the monotonous regime of the industry and there is a feeling that perhaps they could develop in even more exciting ways. Oh for a visionary to take this band’s faith and ability and create something that God would be proud of.
Steve Stockman
Review taken from Stocki's website 'Rhythms Of Redemption' - http://www.stocki.ni.org/
posted by David at 10:48:00 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home