Review: We Are Alive, Elevation Worship

Yesterday I received my copy of Elevation Worship’s We Are Alive from Wade Joye. I first got hooked on Wade’s blog praying for his daughters, and thought it was quite gentlemanly of him to shoot out a free CD to 100 worship leaders. I’ve only listened a few times but here’s a review based on my first impressions:

I love this CD! The music is a high energy blast of catchy hooks, down stroked eighth notes and delay driven octave chords. (Translation for non-music speak: it rocks!) The overall sound reminds me a lot of Seven Places, and for me that’s a good thing. The unity of sound is surprising considering three different worship leaders’ creative talents went into it: Wade Joye, Chris Brown, and Mack Brock. Steven Furtick was the executive producer on the project. Here is a lead pastor who really supports his worship department. I seldom listen to music in my car – usually talk radio, but I like this so much I took it with me on the road.

My favorite song so far is Undivided. The keys and guitar create a counter melody to each other that sweeps me in. I find “Undivided here’s my heart it’s yours, it’s yours” stuck in my head long after the song has stopped.

At a first glance I didn’t find anything I could use on Sunday morning. I’ll definitely keep listening, but there are several reasons this CD doesn’t fit:

• Lead Singer Vocals: We Are Alive features vocals that are mostly one singer pop-style vocals like you’d hear on the radio as opposed to traditional church “choral” style harmony. In general there’s very little harmony on the CD. We are transitioning our ministry towards incorporating more of the “one singer” style, but we aren’t there yet. When I walked into this role the heritage here was a style of a Soprano, Alto, Tenor 3-part harmony on every song (as it is in many churches). I’ve only recently starting putting vocalists on a song by themselves without harmony. It’s made a powerful impact, but it’s still new.
• Electric Guitar: I’ve found I really need to ration how often I put electric guitar into the mix. (This is despite sermons encouraging otherwise.) Nothing splits a congregation like distortion – some people desperately love it and others can’t stand it, I’m selective and intentional about how often I put songs in the mix that need to be driven by electric guitar. On We Are Alive There’s only one song, “Here In This Place” where you can even hear an acoustic guitar. The same reason I love this CD is what makes it unusable in my current context.
• Intricate melodies and instrumentation: The multilayered sound is beautiful and interesting. It also take extra effort to scale down for a smaller band. This doesn’t rule it out all together, it’s just becomes an extra barrier. Like most guys with volunteer musicians I look for simple songs that don’t require professionals to pull off. I do intentionally place a few songs into the rotation that are musically intricate in order to challenge the band. On We Are Alive every song fits this description. That means the whole CD get relegated to a list with very few open slots rather than the “good old standards I can pull out any time” list.

Bottom Line: We Are Alive is a great CD with radio friendly hits that is worth picking up for your personal listening pleasure. If your worship band is doing a lot of Steve Fee, Lee McDerment, Deluge and Hillsong United then you will probably find some gems here for your Sunday morning. For everyone else it’s stylistically beyond what will make sense for your congregation.

We Are Alive sounds nothing like a “worship CD.” That’s probalby the best compliment I can give it.

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