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If you are like me, you hadn’t heard of Gungor before now. That was until the release of their most recent album Beautiful Things.  The band formally known as “The Michael Gungor Band” is led by the husband and wife duo Michael & Lisa Gungor and includes Brad Waller & Josh Harvey.  Beautiful Things is the follow up to their debut album Ancient Skies.  Frontman Michael says, “This album is an expression of hope that God will make beautiful things out of the dust in our lives. That God will somehow use us, use our obedience and love, our feeble human effort, and build Himself a kingdom.”

Michael Gungor’s voice bears a strong resemblance to Jack Johnson and Ben Harper and this album includes various styles including folk, blues, & rock.  One thing that I love is the arrangement on this album, which is done by Michael himself. You will hear great sounds ranging from the traditional (guitar,drums,bass,keys) to the unique (cello,violin, flute, organ & strings).

Keys Songs:

•    Dry Bones: What a great opening song, this song explains how God creates us and How He will create us new.  That when we cry out for Him, He is there and saves us.

•    Beautiful Things: My favorite song on the album.  The elegant lyrics tell it all “You make Beautiful Things, You make beautiful things out of the dust.”  It explains to us that even when WE feel that we are just the dust on earth and there isn’t any hope left, WE can have hope in Jesus.  He makes all things new.  He will find what was lost.

•    You Have Me: A beautiful song that tells of Jesus’ love “I’ve wandered heaven’s gates, I’ve made my bed in hell, You were there still.”

•    We Will Run To You: A song that tells of each our path’s when we are living of sin & we then come to realize we have turned from Jesus.  We then ask for the Lord’s mercy and return.  Asking “Break us and recreate us now, Lord have Mercy. Oh, bring us back to you.”

Other Notables: Heaven feat: Israel Houghton & Cannot Keep You

This album was truly a pleasure to listen to.  In the CCM mainstream, it is a delight when something new and not the norm catches your attention and truly gets you moving toward the cross.  I look forward to what the future holds for Gungor.  I hope that they can continue to grow and expand on what they have established thus far. So go to i-tunes or amazon and take a listen.

8/10

Follow Hearts of Saints on twitter:@heartsofsaints

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If you happen to be opposed to a little dance mixed into your rock you’d better grow some patience. Can’t say it’s a new thing however, there are some quite popular groups now pairing their rock or emo sound with a disco back beat. Hearts of Saints is right there with them. This scruffy faced emo-hair cut quartet is releasing their debut album with Revolution Art. It’s not hard to imagine HoS fitting perfectly on a tour with some of the titans of CCM.

Whether the last statement fosters curiosity or fear should reveal to you your feelings about this work. Even if the rest of CCM sends you running to the nearest keyboard to blog your feelings about the industry, this release is a collection of quality tunes. With that said I offer this caveat.

Something here troubles me; if you weren’t careful you could listen to this album in its completion and not remember a thing. Applying a critical ear I can say there is one real standout. This track is Beautiful Mystery. Choked full of hooks it has a chorus that exemplifies what others in the genre’ do right. What’s unfortunate is that it seems if HoS put some more time and effort into song construction than into the production the listener would have a little something more to hold on to.

Lyrically nice, musically adequate, and catchy enough; however, memorable—this work is not. There is little doubt in this critic’s mind that the industry will latch on to HoS and take them for a ride. To find the missing piece, Hearts of Saints need to become better musical risk takers. Lose the safe formulas that made other groups successful and force us to remember you.