Love Divine - A Recommendation

Bob Kauflin writes:

There are a lot of hymns albums being made these days. In fact, I’m working on a post now that highlights some of the ministries and individuals who are participating in rearranging, rewriting, or composing hymns. Very exciting to see more people realizing that the songs we use for praising God can’t be restricted to ones that are driven more by melody and beat than lyrical impact and depth.

But not all hymns albums are the same. Some are simply reworkings of well-known hymns that may or may not be worth recording one more time. Love Divine is not one of those albums.

A couple weeks later after I received it I was listening to the album in my car. This is what I was pleased to discover then and through repeated listenings:

• Almost all the melodies (all of them new) seemed fresh, well crafted, and designed for congregational singing.
• The songs seemed to be chosen for lyrical content rather than simply familiarity, which is not always the norm for hymns albums.
• The production is centered in the modern rock genre, but has enough variety to make things interesting. In other words, it wasn’t dominated by wall-to-wall guitars.
• For the most part the new melodies, additional choruses, and musical settings complemented the original lyrics.
• While the vocalists are artists in their own right (Tim Hughes, Jason Roy, Leigh Nash, Aaron Keyes, Brenton Brown, and others), they keep the creative vocal licks to a minimum making it easier to adapt these hymns for congregations.
• The gospel is all over this album, but the songs cover a wide variety of topics including the resurrection, Christ’s reign, Christ’s love for his people, prayer for sanctification, the return of Christ, Christ’s presence as we gather, God’s sovereignty, passion for Christ, and more.

Read the rest.  

Get this recording here.