Earlier on today I found myself in a car full of some of the youth from my church, and as it had a cassettes as opposed to a CD, I hooked the iPod into the system and started playing Praise and Worship songs that I thought would be to everyones taste, mixing it up, and it was at this moment that I realised quite how huge the contribution to modern worship has been from the varying worship leaders hooked in to the Passion movement. Hall, Crowder, Tomlin, Watermark, I was into hundreds and hundreds of tracks to choose from, to follow an old metaphor it was like shooting fish in a barrel. And thus, getting the latest Chris Tomlin album was something I have been looking forward too throughout the summer. Few outside of Hills can compete with Chris for writing great worship songs that can be taken up easily and translate amazingly into the church setting, they work in the live atmosphere of the grand auditoriums, in the smaller churches where they may be done acoustically or with very little instrumentation, and on his own studio produced album.
See The Morning is no exception, it's a beautifully written and produced album that contains several memorable moments and is of a great songwriting quality throughout. When an artist has had so much good material it is hard to avoid comparing with previous works, and this album continues where Arriving left off, especially with such tracks as the catchy 'Made To Worship' which is a really amazing track, and surely a future classic. Also featured is Brenton Brown's 'Everlasting God', and the infectious, poppy and upbeat opener from this years Passion release, 'Awesome is The Lord Most High'. 'Glory in the Highest' takes us into more intimate worship, while on the closing version of 'Amazing Grace' Chris has included a little sung verse, as well as new arrangements and parts of his own to make a really nice new spin on an old favourite. It's so hard to single out tracks for praise from an album that is consistently listenable like this, in fact, I'm quite sure you could play both Arriving and See The Morning, back to back, and never feel the need to skip a track. The style is guitar driven and the arrangements are tight and not over complicated, Chris and his bands experience really shows in how they well gel together on recordings.
In conclusion this album is a really great release, it doesn't change ground musically from the familiar territory of previous Tomlin releases, however, far from being limiting, this is a really good thing, after all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So many artists at this stage in their careers look to experiment or do something different to surprise people, however Chris is a worship leader, he's good at this, he does it consistently well, and its great to see him continuing to be blessed with awesome material and to keep blessing the church with it. I hope there is still some space on the Mantle piece in the Tomlin family home, as I expect there may be some more awards to add to those already received coming up soon. Buy it. There is not enough worship of this quality being released!
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