[Fandrew]

Well, all seven of them are out now, so what is your favorite?

[bravesfan007]

This is a hard one. I'll have to think about it and get back to this. I have a notion as to which one I'm going to go with, but I'd like to think about it some more.

Sent from my iPhone using CGR Forum

[dtaylorl]

I was just thinking about this the other day. I decided on Church Music, but A Collision and Illuminate were very close. Unfortunately, I don't own the first two albums and haven't heard them in their entirety.

[Role Modlin]

Church Music over Illuminate...by a very small margin.

[Fandrew]

I voted for Church Music, but Remedy has always been really good for me. I'm liking the new one so far,but I'm gonna need a road trip to properly digest the whole thing.

[Sean]

Illuminate


I completely don't understand the appeal of Church Music or the Give Me Rest. There are no songs from Church Music which I continue to listen to, and only a few from Give Me Rest which I think I will continue to listen to. Listening to Give Me Rest from beginning to end felt like I was doing homework.

[Sean]

As this thread got me thinking, I skipped on over to the wikipedia to see what it had to say about Give Us Rest, and here are a sampling of review quotes.

Originally Posted by Ron Augustine wrote of Christianity Today

sounds exactly as a 'final album' should. It is a Mount Everest of worship rock albums, never to be topped.

Originally Posted by Christina Manifesto

a masterpiece, one that totally eclipses what many thought was possible.

I read reviews like this and I wonder if they're reviewing the album or the album's ambitions. Do they really think all 34 tracks deserve 5 stars and the term "masterpiece?" Is this really an ALBUM they'll be listening to over and over OR are they happy that a Christian artist is finally doing something ambitious...and thus reviewing the ambitions rather than the final product?

CHURCH MUSIC
None of the songs from Church Music have been played in the student ministry or adult worship at our church, except "How He Loves." Of course, his version of the song is the least favorite version of most people in the band...until Seventh Day Slumber decided to mess with it.

I also really haven't liked the production of his last two albums.

All that stated, I really like his first four albums. Maybe it's just that I miss him playing acoustic guitar.



I also found their breakup announcement to be over-the-top.

Originally Posted by Official Breakup Announcement

The David Crowder*Band was formed in the year two thousand; ....We signed a 3 album deal with our friends at sixstepsrecords who are part of the EMI/CMG family. We didn’t want to be presumptuous, presuming there would be more than those first three albums, but we hoped. And so we began discussions about building a 6 album set, the second three, if we were ever to have the great privilege of recording them, would be loosely associated with the first three, you know, sort of like how in the creation story day one is related to day four, as in, first there is light, then on the fourth day the sun and moon and stars appear. ...

The problem, or the beauty, is that we’ve never been able to see past album 6.

First off, I'm not really sure what it means to say they formed in the year 2,000 since they had been playing together for years as the University Baptist Band and recorded 2 albums independently. Many songs from those early albums reappeared on the official David Crowder Band releases.

Second off, if they are having trouble imagining how to make an album after album 6...I can tell them pretty quickly. "Write a bunch of songs. Sort through them and pick your favorites. Or pick a concept and write a series of songs surrounding this concept." They should be familiar with both approaches since they have done each method 4 times.

[Fandrew]

I saw him in concert last week doing a solo acoustic set. It was a bit of a throwback performance, but it wouldn't be my preference for an album.

And very little of Church Music works for performance by other groups, I agree.

[dtaylorl]

Why does the fact that there aren't as many songs that you can play at church make Church Music inferior?

Crowder's version of How He Loves is my favourite version personally, but I realize I am probably in the minority with that opinion.

[SupaNova]

I haven't voted...yet....but I do think I've narrowed my top three down to Illuminate, A Collision and Give Us Rest.

Originally Posted by Sean

I completely don't understand the appeal of Church Music or the Give Me Rest. There are no songs from Church Music which I continue to listen to, and only a few from Give Me Rest which I think I will continue to listen to. Listening to Give Me Rest from beginning to end felt like I was doing homework.

I think it just comes down to preferences, honestly. I personally wish there were more Worship, Praise, whatever you want to call the "genre" artists making albums like Church Music and Give Us Rest. They're not records I can spin on a daily basis and I wouldn't use the vast majority of those songs in a corporate worship setting, but I appreciate the different approach.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by dtaylorl

Why does the fact that there aren't as many songs that you can play at church make Church Music inferior?

I just don't like the songs. I have little desire to listen to any of them. That's why I think it's inferior. If I relistened to it I'd probably find a few which I like. But none just naturally stuck.


The real issue with all of these complains is that I feel that over the last few years they've shifted from ambitious to pretentious. They've always been quirky, different, and ambitious. From the last two albums I've gotten the vibe (this is obviously just my impression and by no means fact), that they bought into their own press. People have been calling them ambition and brilliant for so long that they started to believe it. So suddenly we get an album called CHURCH MUSIC which isn't suited for church at all, a farewell letter where they claim they've always planned to record 6 albums and have no idea what to do for a 7th, and a final album contain 34 tracks with a name with brackets and parenthesis. It feels to me like they've been trying way too hard to show everyone how ambitious and quirky and different they are.

Anyway, all that to say, if you're a worship band who writes songs for churches and you record an album called, "CHURCH MUSIC," it's very odd if that album has the fewest church ready songs out of all your albums. The title seems to give the impression you are writing music for churches. However, I think time has shown that did is not what happened with that album...with the exception of "How He Loves" which he did not write.

Crowder's version of How He Loves is my favourite version personally, but I realize I am probably in the minority with that opinion.

A lot of people like it.

The people I'm around like worship music but not CCM. They're very cynical towards CCM. So when David Crowder takes a very organic song like "How He Loves" and turns it into a radio single for CCM, they become more cynical. They're all familiar with the backstory of the song How He Loves : A Song Story on Vimeo . So when they see someone take a song written in response to a death and format it for the radio (including changing lyrics) it sets off their cynical vibes. They mostly only like this version of the song How He Loves - John Mark McMillan on Vimeo


David Crowder's version is the first version I heard of the song, and I didn't like it. I thought it was really bland. But I read review which said something like, "David Crowder covers John Mark McMIllians great song..." This caused me to look up other versions. in the process I discovered Jeremy Riddles version...which is great. Shortly afterward John Mark McMillian released his live version which is even better.

So though I don't like David Crowder's version it did introduce me to the song and popularize it.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by SupaNova

I haven't voted...yet....but I do think I've narrowed my top three down to Illuminate, A Collision and Give Us Rest.

I think it just comes down to preferences, honestly. I personally wish there were more Worship, Praise, whatever you want to call the "genre" artists making albums like Church Music and Give Us Rest. They're not records I can spin on a daily basis and I wouldn't use the vast majority of those songs in a corporate worship setting, but I appreciate the different approach.

I appreciate that they're trying to expand the genre. I think Illuminate and A Collision were far more successful at doing so. As I wrote in my above post, I got a more pretentious vibe from the last two.

As I mentioned above, I think some people like the albums more because they like the idea of the album more than the execution.

[SupaNova]

Originally Posted by Sean

I appreciate that they're trying to expand the genre. I think Illuminate and A Collision were far more successful at doing so. As I wrote in my above post, I got a more pretentious vibe from the last two.

As I mentioned above, I think some people like the albums more because they like the idea of the album more than the execution.

I can definately understand why somebody would get a pretentious vibe from the last two albums, and the band has certainly never done too much to dissuade people from that train of thought.

I will also say that I still don't get Church Music and it took a while for that record to grow on me to begin with. I enjoy listening to it now, but I still don't get what the heck their overarching message was suppose to be. There are some excellent individual tracks and there is some really cool stuff composition-wise going on throughout the record, but thematically, it attempts to chase several loose, semi-cryptic strands that ultimately never come back together.

Illuminate, A Collision and Give Us Rest all had much stronger, and much clearer, thematic elements tying their respective collections of songs together, in my opinion.


And those reviews you quoted earlier....I cringed when I read most of them. From what I've gathered over the years, the people who run most of them mainstream "christian music" review sites don't seem to understand how music criticism is suppose to work. But that's probably a subject best left for another thread.