Dove Awards, Michael Gungor, new review format

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I really shouldn’t care about the Dove awards. I have this weird feeling that some of my readers actually think that the Doves are given to artists who are good, or at least recent. The artist of the year for 2005 last released in album in 2003. A number of the awards are almost exact repeats of last year. To be short, the awards are a ton of crap. Switchfoot won some, even though no mentally sane person would do an awards show for 2005 covering 2004 that rewards stuff a band did in 2003. Ha, mental sanity – we are talking about the GMA here. Phantom Tollbooth reports and also has a list of people who shouldn’t admit to having won anything.

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Anyway, I’ve been meaning to post about Michael Gungor for a while now. I was given his CD back at the Creation West Festival in 2004 and I’ve been dreading reviewing it ever since. You can hear clips of him here, sorry, they don’t have any full mp3s up now. I’ve decided to try a new format of review for his album, and give it a test run here. Let me know what you think of the format…I might put this on the site proper soon.

Michael Gungor – Bigger Than My Imagination

Sorry if this review seems a bit dicey, but we’re trying a new format so we can review albums in our queue faster. We received this album at Creation West in 2004 after the press conference with Michael Gungor, and we’re sorry that it’s taken so long to get to reviewing it.

To be honest, this is a tough album to review. Michael Gungor’s a talented guitarist, and he has quite a heart for worship – but the songs on this album range from fairly good to just plain boring. An irritating, repetitive chorus of “I am a friend of God” is the bulk of two of the album’s 15 songs. Actually, make that 12 songs – three of the “songs” are more accurately described as “short interludes”, coming in at less than a minute each. A rather dull cover of “Here I Am To Worship” quickly proves to be another low point of the album. However, balancing those off are some fairly solid numbers. “Doxology” is played beautifully as an acoustic instrumental, and is one of the best examples of an artist offering up their raw talent to God that I’ve ever heard. “Move Me” features some clever interplay of acoustic and electric guitars, and some great drums, bass, and keys flesh out the song well to make it another album highlight. While the album is largely acoustic, the backing instruments do a great job of accenting Michael Gungor’s sound. Some of the best session musicians in the business appear, including David Davidson (violinist who’s worked with everybody, including big-names like Sixpence None the Richer and Switchfoot) and Mark Townsend (who plays keys on this album but is known for producing artists like Relient K and for playing guitar in a number of popular CCM bands, including dc Talk and Zilch). Strings, guitars, keys, percussion – the album has a fresh and folksy feel that might make fans of groups like FFH and Bethany Dillon feel at home. The lyrics are mostly fresh and while they’re not exactly the best out there, they’re pretty decent for a praise-and-worship album. Let’s face it, everybody in Christian music wants to do a worship album these days, and it’s not easy for a new face from Michigan to release a decent worship album on his first try.

All that said, I’m really not sure what to think of this album. It’s not bad, certainly, but it doesn’t really do much to stick out as being great either. I think it was Nicole Nordeman that said that sometimes some of the most profound spiritual ideas are found in some of the simplest of utterances, and Michael Gungor seems to understand that fairly well. None of these songs are particularly great, but as contemporary worship goes, this is actually rather good. The songwriting is above average for that genre (not that that’s all that amazing, but Michael Gungor certainly deserves points for that) and the backing musicians do a great job of changing the sound enough to keep the album from being overly dull or clichéd. A few songs start to rock a little, while others are more folksy. Nothing really shatters the stereotype of what modern worship music should sound like, but the album doesn’t stick to the exact same sound in every song either. There’s an odd balance of highlights and low points on this album, and while I wouldn’t call this bad at all, I don’t think it really comes together as an album enough to deserve the label of “solid album” either.

Overall, I’d say if you’re into “worship music”, as people in the Christian subculture tend to think of it, you’d probably love this album. Otherwise, you’ll probably only like some of the songs. This is a great attempt for a debut album from a new praise-and-worship artist, but I don’t think it’s good enough to recommend it to everybody.

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