Solid album of inspirational country music
After a string of hit singles and albums with Atlantic throughout the 1990s, the label’s country division was closed. He found continued success on Warner Brothers and DreamWorks, but in 2006 he started his own Rocky Comfort imprint. The typical arc for a country star of Lawrence’s vintage would be continued success at smaller live venues, and little or no commercial reaction to his indie releases. But Lawrence’s first self-released album, For the Love, worked its way to #6 on the country chart and spun off three singles, including the #1 “Find Out Who Your Friends Are.” The latter was the slowest climbing chart topper in the history of the Billboard singles chart, taking forty-one weeks to achieve the top spot. Lawrence followed up with the holiday album All Wrapped up in Christmas, but its title track, limited to holiday play, fell shy of the country top forty.
This third release on Rocky Comfort is Lawrence’s first album of inspirational country music. Lawrence sings songs of praise, such as the opening prayer of thanks, “Dear Lord,” but the meat of the album explores how faith intertwines with every day life. He sings of evolving past bad habits, petty bitterness and destructive behaviors to lead a more productive life on Earth. He draws a moving allegory between Jesus and those around you whose dedication you take for granted, and ultimately draws upon his faith to keep going from day to day. A pair of songs, “The Book You Never Read” and “The Rock,” are voiced by inanimate objects (a family bible and a foundational church stone, respectively), providing multigenerational views of faith and worship.
The rocking “Jesus Come Talk to Your Children” is a plea for explanations of war and natural disaster, but its suggestion that “politics and fear and hate create the great divide” misses the irony of fundamentalist religious beliefs at the root of many of the world’s largest conflicts. That said, Lawrence offers his inspirational convictions in good faith; the only proselytizing here is by virtue of good examples rather than calls for the lost to straighten up and find Jesus. The album’s messages will appeal strongly to the faithful, but the welcoming tone also makes this interesting to non-Christians. Best of all, Lawrence is still producing music that sounds as good as anything he released in the ’90s. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com] 