Brooke Fraser's Albertine

Ok... so I'm a worship leader. That means that I love all the worship tunes that you would normally hear on the radio or that can be found in most churches on your average Sunday morning, right?

No, not really.

Its usually the case that given any one organization of song writers (Hillsong United, Maranatha Praise, Vineyard Praise, Sovereign Grace, Indelible Grace etc), that I find myself drawn to a small sub-grouping of individual writers. That is to say that while I can say "I like Hillsong United", what I really mean to say is that there are certain songwriters within the Hillsong United family that I enjoy.

Now, don't take me wrong... this is not to say that any of the writers that aren't on my preferred list are less Godly, less talented or not as worthwhile... I am simply stating that given my personal preferences, there are only a few that I really enjoy.

This brings me to Brooke Fraser. Six months ago or so, I was introduced to one of her songs: "Hosanna". It was on some Hillsong project that someone had loaned to me to learn for a worship set. I remember distinctly thinking how great a song it was (and is).

More recently, the other singer for my Sunday night services (Thanks Virginia!!) gave me some music to another one of Brooke's songs entitled "None but Jesus". I'll admit that just reading through the music didn't give me much of a feel for the song, but I thought it would be worth checking out... so I piled it away in my list of "songs I hope to do in the future".

When I finally got around to tracking down the song on iTunes and giving it a listen, I was pleasantly surprised... another great song by Brooke.

Move forward a few more weeks... while reading through one of my trade magazines, there was a mention of the release of Brooke's new CD, "Albertine". Within a day or so of reading that, I also came across a review that Bob Kauflin put on his blog suggesting that people check out this new CD. (While some of you may not know who Bob is, he is well respected in my circle of worship-leading friends.)

I told Virginia about the CD being out and Bob's review and we both talked about how we needed to buy the CD.

Fast-forward to the service last night. While I'm finishing packing up, Virginia comes up to me and says "I got the CD and you're going to borrow it." Its true. She got the CD and I borrowed it. *grin*

I had to take a trip across town today, so I took it with me and popped it into the CD player... and was very surprised with what I heard.

Typically, I jump around CDs. I either get drawn into certain songs or pushed away from certain songs within the first 30 seconds or so. This was not the case with the Albertine CD.

Of the first 10 songs (that's all I had a chance to listen to), there was only one song that almost got the "next" from me. It wasn't necessarily because it was bad, but it was just not as good as the others.

Track for track, I was impressed with the writing and production of the CD.

I will say that many of the songs are similar... in fact, there were a couple vocal lines that were "re-used" from one song to the next... but the production and styling of the CD were impressive enough that it didn't matter.

If you don't know who Brooke is, but like Coldplay, Neil Finn, Sara Groves and a good message - do yourself a favor and check out the CD.

If you don't know who any of the people are I mentioned, STILL do yourself a favor and check out the CD.

I'm not sure Virginia is going to get her CD back. *grin*

In Him,
Jim