Redemption Songs

Beating Time

REDEMPTION SONGS (CD)
By Kate Simmonds
Kingsway Music. £14.99

I first heard Kate Simmonds through the Stoneleigh worship recordings. Kate and husband Miles head up the worship leader team at the Church of Christ the King in Brighton (home of Townend and Phatfish). As writers they are probably best known for this super hymn:

When I was lost,
You came and rescued me;
Reached down into the pit and lifted me.
O Lord, such love,
I was as far from You as I could be.
You know all the things I’ve ever done,
But Jesus’ blood has cancelled every one.
O Lord, such grace
To qualify me as Your own.

Great stuff! A chorus and two more verses follow. However, the A B A B C B structure can prove a bit of a challenge for some congregations. I have about half a dozen recordings of this song — including a very bluesy version on Kate’s excellent studio album Heart and Soul — but it was always crying out for the big, gospel choir treatment. Well now it has it. Sort of.

In Redemption Songs, Kate heads up a 40-strong choir backed by a very tight ten-piece band (which includes Ben Castle on sax). Mostly it works pretty well. However Kate doesn’t really have a big enough voice to be entirely convincing, and her predominantly white choir lacks richness and depth.

Some of the songs are a little weak too (e.g. Redman’s ‘Jesus, I could sing in the tongues of men and angels’ seems entirely to miss the point of 1 Corinthians 13). But most of Kate’s material is very good, particularly her new four-verse hymn ‘In Him I have believed’ (I think I detect more than a hint of Townend’s influence).

There’s plenty of variety. The song ‘Mighty God’ is extremely energetic, heaps of fun and has a large dose of Santana in the middle. The album concludes with ‘We’ve Come To Praise You’ in the style of Sting’s ‘If You Love Someone Set Them Free’, which moves seamlessly into a classic version of ‘Oh Happy Day’. In a word: gospel.

Beating Time

PGDH