Okay so is it just me or does anyone else feel the drought in new worship music releases? The “latest” worship albums I have been spinning are all from last year. So do yourselves a favor, stop what you are doing right now and go out and get the newly released CD “CompassionArt.” This CD was totally an unexpected pleasure to acquire. To give you a framework for it, this project is the vision of Martin and Anna Smith (Martin being of delirious? notoriety). The idea is to get some of the best worship songwriters in the world together (Martin, Darlene Zschech, Chris Tomlin, Israel Houghton, Matt Redman to name just a few), link people up in two’s and three’s and see if they could whip up some righteous new worship songs (my verdict is they succeeded). Secondly, get in the studio and have a bunch of these same songwriters and some cool guests (Kirk Franklin, Leeland, Any Grant, etc.) record a full blown album that sounds great (again, my verdict is they succeeded) and have all proceeds go to charity (and yes, this means ALL proceeds including an agreement with CCLI to not bank off of church play). This album was a pleasant surprise and I recommend it to anyone. Go get it!
On another note, the aforementioned delirious? just released a live CD/DVD project recorded on their tour stop in Columbia. Just watching and listening to these guys I always am amazed at their humility and talent and how much they have paved the way for all modern worship over the past 15 years. If you have never truly experienced d: this is certainly a good starting point. That said, it’s a bittersweet offering since it’s likely their last. Martin and Stu have decided to focus their efforts on future CompassionArt projects and so they have announced the band will shut er’ down at the end of this year. Sniff sniff.
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