Description
Come O Spirit!, sub-titled Anthology of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Volume 1, is a multi-artist compilation released in September 2009 together with the Smith family and Great Comfort Records.
This Bifrost Arts compilation was followed by a Christmas album the same year entitled Salvation Is Created and a follow-up compilation released in 2013 entitled He Will Not Cry Out: Anthology of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Volume 2. Later followed by the compilation Lamentations: Simple Songs of Lament and Hope, Volume 1.
For more than 30 years, pop music has suffered from a God complex – attaching a scarlet letter to artists who include the religious experience in their songs.
But a new generation of musicians from across the spiritual spectrum is emerging, discarding the trappings of the Christian-culture industry to reintroduce the transcendence, beauty and historical gravity of western sacred music to the places where it belongs: dinner parties, road trips and back porches.
Come O Spirit brings together artists like Dave Bazan (of Pedro the Lion), Damien Jurado, Rosie Thomas, Denison Witmer, The Welcome Wagon (featuring Sufjan Stevens) and Leigh Nash to revive 400 years of long-forgotten melodies and liturgical music. The brainchild of producers Isaac Wardell and Mason Neely, Come O Spirit interprets hymnody through lush, cinematic arrangements and a drop of Southern gothic mystique. It’s like a prayer.
The first release from Great Comfort Records is aptly described by the album’s sub-title: it’s an ‘anthology of hymns and spiritual songs.’ There are no hooks to speak of (unless you’re referring to the spiritual sort) – no synth-bass, programmed drums, or synth-strings. Here are thirteen songs sung and played much the same way they might’ve been a hundred years ago. Or maybe three hundred …or four. Here we have the fragile sound of people who haven’t quite figured out all of the theology but are satisfied to sing about the mystery.
When you see the faux-vintage cover art of Come O Spirit, and hold it in your hand, you almost expect a little vinyl LP to fall out. In fact, the CD does recall the golden age of LP labels, with a simple design of muted pastel vertical bars under a flat-side-down gray half-moon, the simple, all-caps title proclaiming “Come O Spirit!” in a very ‘fifties’ font. The music on the disc harkens back even earlier, to a time when the oldest hymns remembered might’ve been reverently laid down in recording studios with the provision that the music wouldn’t be exploited but used for the glory of God. Yeah – this stuff is old-school!
Perhaps in a profoundly wise move, the first track, «I Sought The Lord», features Sixpence None The Richer’s Leigh Nash on vocals – a sound frail and pensive enough to fit well on this collection but familiar enough to the modern listener to compel further exploration. To say that Nash’s vocal is one of the most dynamic on the project gives you an idea of what to expect – no grandiose Sandy Pattys here. This is an album about frail, unsure, awe-struck humanity trying to articulate some form of expression to the God that is their only hope.
There’s beauty and weakness in these songs, like a child’s attempts to make something beautiful for his or her daddy. The purity of the musical setting often shines through the occasionally frustrating vocals (there’s a fine line between sounding vulnerable and just not sounding very good, and occasionally that line is blurred on the recording) – a kind of O Brother, Where Art Thou vibe often emerges from these songs, which seem to have so much Americana about them («Hard Times»). Guitars, banjos, flutes, organ and fiddles create a sonic backdrop that willingly takes a back seat to the simple, haunting vocal harmonies of songs like the slow, melodic «It is Finished», only to re-emerge center-stage on more complex pieces like the stunning «How Calm and Beautiful the Morn» and «He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word».
Bifrost Arts, the latest incarnation of the Danielson Empire, is a loosely-bound fellowship of musicians, and includes such artists as Dave Bazan, Damien Jurado, Rosie Thomas, Shara Warden (of My Brightest Diamond), J. Tillman (of Fleet Foxes), Laura Gibson, Denison Witmer, The Welcome Wagon (featuring Sufjan Stevens), as well as Leigh Nash (of Sixpence None the Richer) and others.
Come O Spirit! offers long-forgotten melodies and liturgical music for the modern worshiper needing something less-glossy and more human than what the major-label ‘Praise and Worship’ machine has been churning out for wide commercial consumption. Is it for everyone? No, I’m sure that there are many who just won’t be able to get into this project. It’s for the curious, the open-minded, those with a broad tolerance for musical forms they’re not used to, and those with musical curiosity. In a world full of noise, Come O Spirit! invites you to step back and reflect. An interesting and uplifting change of pace that you just might enjoy. [Bert Saraco, The Phantom Tollbooth, 2009]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/come-o-spirit-anthology-of-hymns-and-spiritual-songs-vol-i/1643736608)
CD tracklist:
01. Leigh Nash and Megan Roderick – I Sought The Lord – 3:12
02. Trent Dabbs, Kate York, Leigh Nash, and Kevin Bevil – It Is Finished – 3:32
03. Aimee Wilson – Come, O Spirit! – 2:06
04. Laura Gibson – Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me – 3:48
05. Damien Juradoa and Rosie Thomas – Just A Closer Walk – 3:32
06. Kate York – Open Thou Mine Eyes – 1:53
07. Denison Witmer and Sam Ashworth – The Mourner’s Prayer – 1:54
08. David Bazan, Rosie Thomas, J. Tillman, Laura Gibson, John Totten, and Chris Totten – Hard Times – 1:53
09. Shara Worden, Sarah Fullen, and Megan Roderick – Kyrie – 2:17
10. Sarah Fullen, Kelly McRae, and Evan Gregory – Be Still My Soul – 3:31
11. Joseph Pensak and Laura Young – How Calm And Beautiful The Morn – 3:18
12. Liz Janes – Lord, I Believe – 2:36
13. The Welcome Wagon – He Never Said A Mumblin’ Word – 4:37
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