The Bridge (CD - 2008)

Personnel: Anthony Evans (vocals); Akil Thompson (electric guitar, bass guitar); Matt Butler (cello); Shaun Martin (Fender Rhodes piano, Moog synthesizer); Calvin Turner (bass instrument).

After a couple of warmly received projects aimed squarely at the CCM market, Christian crooner Anthony Evans jumped on the worship bandwagon with The Bridge, his first EMI Gospel outing. The album title is curious, suggesting perhaps his jump from a Christian pop label to a gospel one, but as Evans explains in the liner notes, it goes a little deeper than that: worship as a tool in the here and now -- a conduit to hold us over as we make it from this life to the next. But that's just creative nomenclature. Musically, there's hardly anything on The Bridge that suggests such transcendence. At its core, the album is merely a collection of some of the most popular praise choruses of the past decade, like Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name," Tim Hughes' "Here I Am to Worship," and Chris Tomlin's "How Great Is Our God." Evans covers them by the book -- outside of his soulful vocals, there's little if any thought placed in these umpteenth versions. He fares a little better with less obvious selections, like an acoustic soul take on Paul Baloche's "Your Name" or a minimalist rendition of the near-standard "Wonderful, Merciful Savior." Outside of that, The Bridge sounds like a latecomer to the whole praise & worship explosion -- judging by the zeal with which Evans performs the material, you'd swear he just happened upon it. ~ Andree Farias minimize