"The most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday." - James Baldwin & others before him. This is still a problem today in most churches across America; we join churches that think and look like we do. There's not many churches that do this well, but I'm happy to find that some are trying, and modern worship albums like this seem to make the case that it can work sometimes. Released 5 years ago this coming Thursday, this is the 15th album from Elevation Worship and the third album from Maverick City Music. This recording captures nearly two hours of live music at Elevation Church from these two church worship collectives based out of Charlotte and Atlanta coming together. These groups manage to infuse the mostly white, American modern worship sound with a bit of black Gospel feel, and the videos of the recording session shows a melting pot of races and ages both in the combined bands and worshiping in the congregation. A deep bench of worship leaders lead the crowd in songs and also sometimes share their personal stories during their praise to God. At 8⅔ minutes per song on average, there's lots of impromptu praise breaking out throughout and these songs are certainly not designed to be radio singles. I'm still not sure I am comfortable with the slickly-produced, arena rock style of the megachurches in America today like this, but I like the fusion of musical styles here and this album is a pretty good listen. On the other hand, it's a very long album and there's mostly slower songs.

Release Year: 2021
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