Description
The Dreamlife of Angels is the fourth album by the American singer and songwriter Sarah Masen, released on Word Entertainment in March 2001. The album was recorded by Shane D. Wilson and John Jennings at Quad Studios in Nashville, Tennessee; with Jennings and Sarah Masen producing. Additional recording by Bob Dawson and Heidi Gerber at Bias Studios in Springfield, Virginia. Mixed by Dawson at Bias Studios. All songs written by Sarah Masen except “Home” co-written with Julie Lee and “Give a Little Bit”, a song written by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson of Supertramp fame.
Sarah Masen is a beautiful human being. Without doubt culturally good looking too. She is a gentle and tender soul. Aye and maybe a little bit whimsical too. Beneath all that she is a mind and heart and soul that is searching deep within herself and her world and her God for what this big hurting and hopeful world is all about. Beneath the tenderness she is courageous enough to ask the hardest of questions. Beneath the beauty she will look in the face of the world’s most ugly realities and provoke the questions and grope for some direction towards answers.
Dreamlife of Angels is Sarah Masen made sound. It’s as accurate as any artist could ever be in describing themselves through their songs. It’s a stunning work of musical breathtake with its catchy melodies and the little brushes of musical accompaniment. It’s got quirky little phrasings that have you alert with surprise and the most sensitive of little aural thrills. Whether it’s the tranquil shuffle of the hopeful «Valley», the stillness of «Love Is Breathing» about her daughter Dorothy Day Dark’s birth, the folksome endearment of her Supertramp cover «Give a Little Bit», the acoustic funky David Gray-like groove of «Midnight» or the rockier «Hit N Run», less is more and the more you listen the more you get from the spaciousness of John Jennings (Mary Chapin Carpenter) production.
Where Masen stands apart is in her literary approach to songwriting. She is a young woman in love with words and ideas and imagination. She has this God given ability to express the light and the dark and the shades where we all walk in between. There are a few gloomy shadows and then there are these moments when the bright makes the breaks in the clouds all sparkle and beam. She describes her life with its recent marriage and even more recent motherhood and the friends around her and tries to seek some insight to who we are, where we are, what we are going through and how we start to hear somewhere more worthwhile and peaceful. It’s an album full of hope and love and a new kingdom coming in the midst of the old one. It’s dangerous because it’s honest and it’s auspicious because it is grace drenched.
It may just be March and the first few months of the year are always a little lacking in album releases but it may be safe enough to say even now that this is the best album that will come out of the Christian industry in 2001. If anything betters it you should buy it for sure. [Steve Stockman, The Phantom Tollbooth, 2/3/2001]
The popular Christian singers’ new album features tunes borne out of some of everyday observations, a taking note of preciousness and trouble and many a moment of encouragement in life and a call to learn how to value one another properly. The life-affirming «Love Is Breathing», for instance, flows like a meditation/prayer concerning a growing fetus inside the womb. «We Are a Beginning» plays like a wedding song, a kind of determined hope statement. «A Beginning», «Hope», «The Valley», and «Give a Little Bit» are new folk song prayers of blessing and release, caroled in four-part melody-harmony-rhapsody-everybody sing spirit. «Girl on Fire», «Hit-n-Run», «Home», «She Stumbles Through the Door», and «Midnight» are stories of love and loss, hope and despair, chance and providence. Pretty much what you might expect from a person of faith living in the real world and trying to keep an optimistic view despite the troubles around her. It’s the poetry of everyday life, and Masen delivers it with a convincing passion and makes the listener feel a call to compassion as well. [Jonathan Widran, AMG]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-dreamlife-of-angels/1165975145)
CD tracklist:
01. We Are a Beginning – 4:15
02. Girl On Fire – 3:19
03. The Valley – 4:56
04. Love Is Breathing – 5:13
05. Give a Little Bit – 3:37
06. Midnight – 4:13
07. Hit and Run – 3:07
08. She Stumbles Through the Door – 5:50
09. Hope – 3:38
10. Home – 3:49
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and CD by Word Records.
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