Wakened by the Wind

Description

Wakened by the Wind is the debut album by the American singer Susan Ashton (born Susan Rae Hill but using her mother’s maiden name of Ashton to avoid confusion with Kim Hill), released on Sparrow Records in February 1991. The album was produced by Wayne Kirkpatrick.

The adult contemporary vocalist’s first single “Down on My Knees” gained an audience with CCM radio listeners around America in 1991, and made her album Wakened by the Wind the biggest-selling debut in the history of the Sparrow label. Ashton reached number one in the Christian charts two more times that year (“In Amazing Grace Land” and “Ball and Chain”), received a Dove award for New Artist of the Year and won a CCM readers and reporters poll for Best New Artist.

One doesn’t have to look very far into the past to remember when the sensitive singer-songwriter was the darling of the pop music world. In the early 70s, people like Carly Simon, James Taylor, and the like ruled the charts. It wasn’t until the very end of the 80s that Tracy Chapman made it okay to sing songs without all the synths, bells, and high tech toys which had almost become a necessity to the record making process.

These days it isn’t such a shock to came across the quite pretty ‘Wakened By The Wind’ by Susan Ashton. Kudos to Sparrow for letting Ashton make a record which does musical justice to her songs. This is a record where guitars are more likely to be strummed than screeched; where the piano is tickled, not thumped; and the bass is heard bending more notes than it blasts.

Ashton’s songs vacillate between odes to God, and exhortations to the church. The best of the former include «No One Knows My Heart» and «I Hear You»; and the latter category includes: «Land Of Nod» (the nod part refers to the sleeping church), and the urgent «Beyond Justice To Mercy» with a chorus that begins, “We must reach out beyond justice to mercy/ Going more than halfway to forgive.” Phil Keaggy guests on this reminder for us to go out of our way sometimes to help make a bad relationship night.

Here is one album that is pretty, without getting sappy. Ashton sings beautifully throughout. Her’s is an original vision, and only once, in the opening «Down On My Knees» where she’s a dead ringer for Shawn Colvin, does she sound like she’s imitating somebody.

The writing and musicianship is great throughout on this promising debut which proves that Sparrow has more than Margaret Becker going for it in the female vocalist department. [Dan MacIntosh, Harvest Rock Syndicate, Issue 2, 1991 (Volume 6)]

> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/wakened-by-the-wind/724683042)

CD tracklist:

01. Down On My Knees – 4:15
02. No One Knows My Heart – 3:05
03. Benediction – 5:29
04. Ball and Chain – 4:30
05. I Hear You – 6:12
06. Land of Nod – 4:09
07. In My Father’s Hands – 4:08
08. In Amazing Grace Land – 4:31
09. Suffer In Silence – 3:59
10. Beyond Justice to Mercy – 4:22

Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and CD by Sparrow Records.

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