averyfineline

The Nelons: Beside Still Waters
Vine Records
2010
At NQC in 1995, the Gaither Vocal Band was selling limited time pre-release editions of its Southern Classics, Vol. 2, Guy Penrod’s debut recording with the group. His big song on the album was “Count on Me,” a testimonial anthem with a fireworks climax built around Penrod’s gigantic range. On […]

Jason Crabb
Jason Crabb
Spring Hill, 2009
ALI: 83%
The first line of the first song, “Somebody Like Me,” on Jason Crabb’s new album says a lot about his debut solo album:

The congregation parted like the Red Sea,
When that old drunk stumbled in down the aisle
And took a seat, right in the middle of Amazing Grace
It suffers alone […]

On the Way Up
HisSong
Vine Records, 2007
ALI: 50%

HisSong is typical of many hard-working groups on the fringes of the industry who can sing for years and burn through several short-lived careers, all the while teetering between obscurity and breaking through. On the Way Up is the group’s third album (or fourth, depending how you feel […]

Thankfully, only the title of this album sounds like a show at Branson.

Whitmire’s cd of old-timey gospel standards has been in my car for the past however many weeks (months?) since Mark Lowry was in town, and it’s captivated me, even though finally it leaves me disappointed (more on that in a moment). […]

I know the Collingsworth Family has a new album out, but I’ve decided to write about their 2005 recording because … well, for one, that’s what was at the top of the stack and two, because for whatever reasons my review may or may not matter, timeliness really isn’t of them.
The Collingsworth Family
God is […]

Janet Paschal
Sounds like Sunday
Vine Records, 2007
ALI: 100%

From her very early days with the Rex Nelon Singers, Janet Paschal’s career has been defined by stylistic dexterity: after her stint in southern gospel, she branched out into 1980s inspirational anthems as a soloist for televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, a style that morphed during her time on the […]

Austins Bridge
Austins Bridge
Daywind, 2007
ALI: 33%

This new group’s self-titled release could more accurately have been called Rascal Flats for Christians. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Nor are the country currents coursing through the album that surprising given the visible (and sometimes audible) influence of the Crabb family on this young male trio […]

I guess I should have listened more carefully to Kenny Bishop’s project when I got it back in the summer. What are we to make of the nomination and this album? Having just finished listening to it tonight, not too much, I hope. Not because the album isn’t good (it ranges from serviceable to enjoyable, […]

Legacy 5
Live in Music City
Daywind 2006
ALI: 67%

If, as Cecilia Tichi claims in her book High Lonesome, the experience of country music starts in the car with the radio, the experience of southern gospel starts in the pew, the auditorium seat, the folding chair of the county fair. The live performance remains the basic unit […]

With this review, I’m introducing a new way of rating albums. The method is pretty simple: take the number of songs on an album that you skip over after you’ve gotten to know the song selection well […]