Brian McLaren/Restoration Project
Songs for a Revolution of Hope
CD

About Restoration Project:from the website, Restoration Village: The Restoration Project is a vision of musical and artistic partnership. It is founded upon the eternal hope of a loving creator and a belief that artists able to express anything about this hope and creator become a vehicle for spiritual and relational restoration.

About Songs for a Revolution of Hope: check out the website, blog, etc. for all kinds of info. on this album.

My Review:
This album is rich with repentance songs, creeds/confessions, chants and prayer songs. The lyrics are wonderful - rich, deep, humble. The music leans a bit too much on the side of 70s folk some times for my tastes but at its best, reminds me of the deconstructed drum circle worship of a place here in Fort Collins called the Tool Room (no longer in existence) that I LOVED.

As far as a “listening CD” goes, this is a good album, but at times it was very difficult to understand. I’m not sure if it was the recording quality or the style of the woman singing but I had to really strain to hear the words sung by the female vocalist (who was Tracy Howe I think)…which is kind of annoying. When I pulled up the lyrics from the website it was a little easier.

As a faith community leader, there are a few songs/chants in this album that I would consider using with our community - esp. the prayer songs - but, if the project is intended to create a new genre of “worship music” suitable for corporate musical worship I think it needs some work. Many of the songs are difficult to follow tonally and are either too long or have too many words.

I love the ambitious nature of this project, ancient methods and approaches to musical worship with new, progressive sentiments. I think this idea needs to be embraced and taken to new levels by this group and others. Thanks Brian and Tracy and everyone else who contributed to this project.