12th December, 2007

JUSTIN MICHAEL

Album: Give Yourself Away
Artist: Robbie Seay Band
Year: 2007
Label: Sixsteps Records
Enhanced: No

In a word: Hopeful

There’s something about the voice that’s just, well, hard to put your finger on. It’s welcoming somehow. There’s a joy in the music that just makes you want to listen for the layers underneath.

When I spun the CD, I was expecting congregational songs, but instead, somewhat like stablemate David Crowder, the Robbie Seay Band serves up an altogether unpredictable blend of lyrical musings on God, the universe and everything all wrapped in pop music that has nothing of the copycat sound that pervades Christian music all too often.

There’s a hope about these songs. New Day muses "and if you’re like me, you need hope, coffee and melody; so sit back down, let the world keep spinning round..it’s a new day; oh baby, it’s a new day".

Starting Over gives the advice: "Now hope has found me; I am not alone. Now hope has found me; I am not disowned" and it just keeps going through the album with songs like Shine Your Light On Us, Love Wins, Come Alive, Rise and the radio single, Song Of Hope (Heaven come down).

Where does this hope come from? One could give the pat answer - "They’re Christian kids, they believe in God" - but you need only read the liner notes to see something deeper is going on here - “We recently discovered that our faith and our actions seemed miles apart. We’ve lived in comfort in the richest land in history without much thought of the world around us. There is a great need in every corner of this globe and injustice is taking place everyday”

The band go on to commend many missional organisations and again prove that once we learn to see beyond ourselves, one can also see further in and then take the opportunity to affect change.

Listen, if only for the need of catching some hope.