Musical refreshment

Trevor and Kate continue on their sabbatical, so this time we hear from our Worship Pastor, Will Jackson ...

Greetings all! I have been given the privilege of writing the blog entry this time around and have decided, for your benefit, to stick to what I know: music. So here are a few music recommendations, both Christian and secular.

To kick us off I’ve been thoroughly enjoying last summer’s Soul Survivor album: We Are The Free. There are always some great songs to bring back to the worshipping life of Holy Trinity whenever we go to the festival in Shepton Mallet and last summer’s was no exception. This is a great album to use for your own personal worship as it’s live and so you get a real sense of the Spirit’s leading as the album journeys through. You’ll instantly recognise some of the tunes as ones that we are already using in church and this album’s energy is sure to get you bouncing.

Next up is Rend Collective Experiment’s Homemade Worship For Hand Made People. I really love this album for its organic feel and the approach they took to recording where they decided against going into the studio, instead using each other’s homes for all of it. Click here for the story of the album in their own words. Their version of Be Thou My Vision will have you jigging around in joyful abandon whenever you hear it.

Trevor and Kate have been over to Bethel Church in Redding recently during their sabbatical and Bethel’s latest worship offering is an acoustically inspired, live worship set called The Loft Sessions. Similarly to Rend Collective’s album it has a real sense of a community coming together to worship and there is something really inviting and powerful about that. If you’re looking for an album with a little less ‘noise’ but with a really good heart then look no further. The stripped back version of One Thing Remains is an inspired take on a song that has been everywhere over the last couple of years and has challenged me to look for interesting arrangements and new and fresh sounds for our worship here at HTR.

And to finish off, not worship related but here are some artists I’ve been enjoying recently. James Vincent McMorrow’s album Early in the Morning was a huge hit last year and launched him from nowhere to now being fairly well known and his cover of Steve Winwood’s Higher Love has been used recently on a LoveFilm advert and is hauntingly beautiful. There’s a throwback to the seventies with Rotary Connection’s album Dinner Music (1970). For those of you unfamiliar to Rotary Connection, they formed in Chicago in 1966 and proceeded to produce some fantastic psychedelic soul music. Minnie Riperton, who had some short-lived success later in life as a solo artist, before her tragic death in 1979, was in the band and their 1970 offering broadened the band’s horizons with some folk and country influences being married together with their more electronic sound. You might enjoy this if you liked Bon Iver’s latest self-titled album. 
 

Will Jackson