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(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Aaron Neville
Devotion
(EMI Gospel/Tell It)
One should no more question Neville’s inclusion of such generically sentimental favorites as “Bridge over Troubled Water,” “I Shall Be Released,” and “Morning Has Broken” on what is supposed to be a gospel album than question his inclusion of “Ave Maria,” “Crying in the Chapel,” and “God Made You for Me” on what were supposed to be his mainstream pop/R&B albums. The man simply can’t compartmentalize, and when he distills his hand-picked schmaltz to its emotionally pure essence, the results can be intoxicating. Less intoxicating, if more revealing, this time out are the two songs Neville wrote himself: “Jesus Is a Friend of Mine” (which begins with him speaking, “I want to see the world through His eyes, / I want the world to see Him in me”) and “What Would Jesus Do?” (in which he sets the wristband slogan to music and urges us to “[l]et what He lived be your guide”). Rating: Three-and-a-half joyful mysteries out of five.
(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Cece Winans
Alabaster Box
(Wellspring Gospel)
Something in the patience with which Winans swells to a crescendo and the care with which she enunciates a cliché lifts these mundane lyrics and syrupy melodies heavenward. But on the whole the slickness that her four different production teams foist upon the music overcomes her as often as she overcomes it. Rating: Three inevitable Gospel Grammies anyway out of five.
(As published in Offbeat ... )
Beverly Crawford 
Jesus, Precious King
(Warner Alliance)
This live set heats up pretty quickly for major-label gospel. No sooner has the MC exhorted the Nashville congregation to put their "hands together for a truly anointed vessel of the Lord" than Crawford, her Born Again Mass Choir, and the half-dozen or so musicians in her band launch into "We're Glad You're Here," a number that rousingly acknowledges both God and congregation. And even though the next two songs ease up and slow down more than they should, the title cut follows and sets things right by gathering momentum for ten suspenseful minutes and climaxing with a call-and-response sequence so hot it makes the fact that Crawford subjected this album to studio enhancement almost forgivable. Besides, since what was enhanced was almost certainly the horns and keyboards--two superfluous elements here anyway--one wonders why Warner Alliance didn't let the raw glory of the unretouched original stand on its own.
Nevertheless, the fast-slow-slow-fast pattern repeats throughout, providing Jesus, Precious King with a theme-and-variations structure that prevents the album from dissolving into predictability even when Crawford seems bent on doing so herself. The between-song preaching, for instance, could've been read off cue cards. And even the fact that Crawford does an impressive Tina Turner impersonation on the slow ones won't divert attentive listeners from noticing that her taste in lyrics tends toward the banal. But once the lady and her big-voiced choir get rockin' (like on the disc-closing "Come On Everybody," which for some reason fades just as it starts to boil), well, let's just say that not only will skeptics forgive the studio punch-ins, but they'll also forgive--if not forget--that the daughter Crawford thanks in her liner notes is named Latrina.
(As published in Rejoice! ... )
The Mighty Clouds of Joy 
Pray for Me
(Word)
Their twenty-seventh album and fifth live one at least, Pray for Me is an apotheosis. Can't nobody touch their "Can't Nobody," their "Nobody Can Turn Me Around," or their "Somewhere Around the Throne." And "Heavy Load, which they've always owned, has never been captured in a more expansive rendition. Joe Ligon's sermons grow longer and more integral to the songs they set up; that's how the title song grows to eight minutes and the last one to eleven with no one--not the Clouds, not the crowd, and not you--tiring. Beneficiaries of the final miracle, digital sound, include Lloyd Barry's horns, the rhythm section, and Ligon's soulfully pneumonic wheezing. Thirty years on the road and they're peaking again.
Aaron Neville
