Redemption Road By Northern Voices Shadow Mountain. Audio CD. Suggested retail price: $15.98 (US)
Reviewed by: Ivan Angus Wolfe

One quick note before I begin: I have always maintained that LDS "pop music" is better than its "fluffy & bland tripe" reputation. Many people I talk to who condemn LDS pop music for its blandness have heard perhaps one album and judge all subsequent LDS pop music by that standard. When I try to play something for them that is actually quite good they tend to filter it through their previous biases and hear it as cheesy and trite no matter how good it is. Even Michael McLean has a few really good songs -- even though he tends to be synonymous with this negative image of LDS music. I admit much of his music is not to my taste - but there are three songs by him that rank in my all time top twenty. The man has talent -- he just needs a really good producer who can tell him to throw out eighty percent of what he writes. He's released something like twenty albums when he really should only be on number three or four.

Anyway -- that's a digression. LDS music has the talent, even among those traditionally dismissed as lightweight. It just needs a better critical community. The FCMA (Faith-Centered Music Association -- the LDS music association that runs the annual Pearl Awards) is a great step in this direction although it still seems to suffer from the dichotomy of simultaneously rejecting and embracing the "creamy & fluffy" aspects of LDS music -- but I have faith that the FCMA is the best hope LDS music has right now.

Anyway -- enough on LDS music in general -- here's the review:

The first Northern Voices album "Faithful" (which I have in the rare "Sam Cardon & Don Stirling" CD cover) kept me sane on my mission. My mission presidents were fairly strict on music, but since "Faithful" was released by Deseret Book (even though it was under their Shadow Mountain label), it was allowed. While the rest of the music I had was generally restricted to MoTab and Michael -- the Northern Voices album, while still fairly mellow, at least had some semi-upbeat songs that imitated some of my favorite pop stars. The very Sting-like "Days of Living" and the obviously influenced by Rod Stewart (post-disco) "If She Only Knew" made the album a joy to listen to.

But it was far from derivative. It had its own unique voice, and wonderful songs like "All I Can Say" and "Hello Morning" were not only well written but had very intelligent lyrics. Not brillant on the level of say, Paul Simon, Roland Orzabal, or Suzanne Vega -- but very well thought out. In fact, "Faithful's" main strength was in its combination of wonderful music and strong lyrics. While it didn't totally avoid clich�, it managed to take the route of the best in pop music and use clich� to say something original. Every song managed to create a character and tell a story. The song "All I Can Say" for example, seems at first glance to be full of clich�s and clumsy phrases, but the character the lyrics create acknowledges his shortcomings and inability to express his thoughts -- and by so doing, he says something new and unique, much like the Elton John tune "Your Song". The clumsy phrases and awkward clich�s added up to something more than the sum of its parts. While Don Stirling was by no means an amazing lyricist, he had a definite natural feel for pop lyrics.

This new album, coming some eight years later (no hurry to get a sophomore album out, apparently) has none of the charm or appeal of the first album. Everything about it seems forced. It sounds derivative. It sounds like it wants to be a bold new direction in LDS pop but in a way that will offend no one. The lyrics descend to the level of clich� and rarely leave it. There are no unique characters created or stories told. Each song seems to be attempting to describe moods rather than tell stories, which is fine -- but the moods ultimately mean nothing. The music also fails as the songs all wind up sounding nearly the same even with different instrumentation and vocalists. There are a preponderance of slow ballads (easy to write, but very hard to write well), and even the "up-tempo" sounding songs are somewhat slow, and are "up-tempo" in a way that won't offend anyone who thinks up-tempo music is of the devil.

My wife summed it up best. After hearing the album she turned to me and said "Hmm. Kinda cheesy."

Here's a sampling of a few of the songs and some commentary on each:

A. Dance Upon Orion: A very bad Sting rip-off, made worse by the fact that the music sounds more like Michael McLean than Sting. The first track on "Faithful" (Day of Living) also was derivative of Sting, but it sounded like Sting while still managing to sound original. "Day of Living" was based on Stings style while not being based on any particular song. "Dance Upon Orion" is clearly derivative of the song "Fields of Gold" (though in this song they're walking through "fields of silken green"). In "Fields of Gold" Sting managed to capture a mood through a lyrical version of a surrealistic painting. He gave the listener images -- hair hanging down, fields of barley, summer days, that by themselves were hardly striking. But when combined, the images formed a complete whole -- but Sting left it up to the listeners to create this image. "Dance" gives us banal confusing images that don't seem to add up to much. It attempts to get metaphysical but is burdened by its all too earthy images. The music might have helped, but since it sounds like something from an early McLean album (minus the catchy melodies), this song fails to reach the stars it seem to think its been living on for years.

(that comment on McLean was serious -- he actually has some very catchy melodies).

B. For You: This song is perhaps the worst offender in the clich� category. Rather than using the clich�s to say something fresh, this song is content to merely list them, as though a list of clich�s is all it needs to do (some examples: "This one's for you" -- "When the moment's just right" -- "Friends there to lift you up"). The music is a little catchier, but the melody is not very memorable.

C. Silent Night, Lonely Night: Not a Christmas song, and with such a horrid title I didn't expect much -- and I got nothing. Another list of clich�s like "a thousand miles from you" or "I will go anywhere in the world to hold you close." Neither the music nor melody is very distinguished. The fills and crescendos are in all the right places, but it just comes across as bland.

D. Late, Great L.A. Boys: The fifth song on the album, and suddenly it seems like an up-tempo song is finally going to appear. But despite the obvious Hip-Hop influence on the music and lots of cool effects on the guitar, this song is bland. Why? Well, it's hip-hop, but in such a way as not to offend people who don't like hip-hop. The lyrics are a little better with a few promising metaphors (police sirens likened to a choir) -- but its bland, inoffensive hip-hop wannabe instrumentation offends my sensibilities.

E. Come to Know: If a song starts out with a line including "red, red rose" it had better be a Burns poem set to music, because it will almost immediately lose my interest. Again, I expected little and got less. The lyrics again merely list clich�s without doing anything original with them. The music is even worse. It sounds like the illegitimate offspring of a song cut from the musical Les Miserables and the orchestral score from any 1980s LDS seminary film.

F. Mother Lode: It takes until the seventh song to get to something really good. The song starts out promising, with a flamenco guitar and a catchy drum loop, it actually sounds different than the other songs so far. It's still a fairly mid-tempo type ballad, and the lyrics don't do a lot, but it was nice to have something that didn't sound like most of the other songs on the album.

G. She Got Cha-Cha: Another horrid title, and an unmemorable addition to the overused pop song genre about a beautiful woman who can dance. However, you can Cha-Cha to it, so at least it's faithful to its title.

H. Redemption: A rather nice piano solo. It's also the theme from the movie "Brigham City." However, it's nothing you can't get from a George Winston album, and it seems oddly placed as the last song on the CD. This is the only track that's keeping me from getting rid of the album entirely -- but I got the album for free. I wouldn't buy it for this track alone.

I was obviously disappointed with the album. It's not that it's a particularly bad album, it's just that it's only a particularly competent one. There is nothing here to distinguish it from any of the other thousands of "adult contemporary" or "soft pop" albums out there. LDS pop music will not make a name for itself by being just like everyone else. I want LDS pop to succeed, but if it's going to it needs to be better than this. Nothing here makes it competitive. Shadow Mountain was created to make it easier to market LDS products to a national market. The first Northern Voices album did fairly well nationally from what I'm told. I have no idea how this one will do, but it does nothing to distinguish itself. If LDS pop wants to break into the mainstream the way Christian pop did, it needs to create its own image, not be a far-too-faithful mirror of what is already out there.

"Faithful" gave the pop world a unique LDS voice in pop music. It was imitative without being derivative. The song "Day of Living" on that album was full of LDS theology without being preachy. All of the tunes had resonance in LDS culture and belief -- yet without being didactic or even obviously LDS. This new album is, unfortunately, a "we're just like everyone else" album rather than a "we're a lot alike -- but here's a snippet of our unique view of the world that you might be able to understand" album.