Description
Somewhere Down the Road is the fourteenth studio album by the American singer and songwriter Amy Grant, released on Myrrh Records and Sparrow Records in March 2010. Somewhere Down the Road is something between a new album and a compilation, offering six brand new songs, two previously unreleased songs, a new recording of the classic 1982 song “Arms of Love”, and rounded out with three of Grant’s previously released story-songs.
If you’re looking for the pop diva wearing the leopard-print jacket that practically danced off the cover of Unguarded, then you’ve come to the wrong place. Somewhere Down the Road features the Amy Grant of a Star Trek-like alternate time-line: one that started with the Lead Me On album and vectors forward to this mature, wise, deeply personal and artistically satisfying project.
It seems pointless for Grant, at this stage in her career, to try to appease the ‘CCM demographic,’ and we can all be thankful for that. The early Amy Grant years produced Christian pop albums designed to act as a diversion from the evils of secular music and as entertainment for the church Youth Group crowd. Of course, life goes on and the facades of perfection fade in the harsh reality of the day-to-day, and we learn, as we grow, that life is more than pop beats and leopard skin. On this, her first new album in years, Grant looks at life from a better, clearer vantage point and decides to describe that view from somewhere much further down the road. In fact, the oft-quoted first line from M. Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled, sums up one of the overriding truths in this album full of truthful observations: ‘Life is difficult.’ Thankfully, listening to this album is not difficult at all….
Pulling together a set of new songs, a couple of unreleased gems from the vault, and re-working some classic material, Amy has come up with a project that sounds fresh and unified not at all a patchwork or ‘collection.’ For the first time, Grant gets to sing a duet with her daughter on «Overnight», and comes out sounding like the younger of the two voices, with Sarah Chapman displaying a pleasant, earthy, mature tone. This song and the opening track, the insightful «Better Than a Hallelujah», are produced by Dan Muckala, who had me worried (with the sampled-sounding drums that start both songs) that he was taking Grant in a too-modern direction, but redeemed himself as each of the songs got fully underway.
«Every Road» sounds more like the Amy Grant of Lead Me On, and is produced by long-time collaborator, Wayne Kirkpatrick, who used familiar players to round out the band and produce a signature Amy Grant sound. The album progresses to the powerful reflection on the stages of life, «Unafraid», and then nails the previously-mentioned theme with «Hard Times», an honest look at the fact that ‘hard times come. Hard times come for everyone …and they’ll come ’till we’re done.’ Grant never forgets to include the greater truth that ‘the beauty of a new day will always fill the heart,’ or who The Giver of that new day is still, it’s a far cry from «Lucky One».
Right in the middle of this musical ‘road’ we get a good dose of country rock asking an interesting theological question – «What is the Chance of That» has a chorus that recalls the sound of «Hotel California» and lyrics illustrating the randomness of life’s circumstances in a way that should strike a chord in even the staunchest determinist: “I have believed since I was a little bitty girl/ that there were rules of cause and effect/ and they slowly shaped my world/ But pain and hard times, they come and they go/ Like some blindfolded angel somewhere saying, Eeny Meeny Miney Moe/ What is the chance of that.”
The album’s title-track continues the classic Amy sound (and includes the late Jackie Street on bass), followed by what I’d say is the first blues track on any Amy Grant album and it’s a total success. «Third World Woman» is a slow, funky song with stark percussive elements and a compassionate world-wise lyric: “What if I were that mother, staring from my TV/ What if that were my brown-eyed baby, hungry as she could be,” passionately sung and concluding with, “Could be mother could be daughter could be sister to me/ Lord have mercy on me.”
Before finishing up with two fine remakes of previously recorded tunes, Somewhere Down the Road delivers a strong one-two punch with «Find What You’re Looking For», a song explaining that “there’s so much good in the worst of us, so much bad in the best of us” that you’ll find exactly what you want to find if you look hard enough. This is followed by the articulate, melodic, intimately confessional «Come Into My World», where Amy gets bare-knuckle honest on a 1996 recording with just her voice and acoustic guitar.
The last two tracks re-visit familiar territory. The closer, «Imagine/Sing the Wondrous Love of Jesus», combines the crossover hit («I can only Imagine») with the classic hymn in a moving finale – but it’s the penultimate track, «Arms of Love», that’s the real surprise. What was originally a ‘nice’ little bit of Christian pop comes off here as a very moving statement of profound faith. Same melody, same words, but performed from a new vantage point with additional years of insight and experience making the song more potent than ever before.
Somewhere Down the Road features fine production by a variety of producers, excellent material, old and new, and Amy Grant: wife, mother, artist, Christian… considerably further down that road less travelled than when we first met her. [Bert Saraco, The Phantom Tollbooth, 2010]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/somewhere-down-the-road-expanded-edition/721263445)
CD tracklist:
01. Better Than a Hallelujah – 3:42
02. Overnight (feat. Sarah Chapman) – 4:24
03. Every Road – 4:29
04. Unafraid – 3:26
05. Hard Times – 3:01
06. What Is the Chance of That – 3:27
07. Somewhere Down the Road – 5:08
08. Third World Woman – 3:01
09. Find What You’re Looking For – 4:25
10. Come Into My World – 3:25
11. Arms of Love (2010 Version) – 2:59
12. Medley: Imagine / Sing the Wondrous Love of Jesus – 5:18
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