Awaken

Let us try not to gush: You wait a decade between albums like this one.

These thirteen tracks emerge either from Ms. Grant's experience or from the collective wisdom in song selection of her handlers. Either way, we are face to face with stunning music and a beautiful young woman in a world where one grows weary of finding such a correspondence.

This is no crossover romance-or-religion puffery, where the listener takes his pick of context. To the contrary, Grant sings from deep and unveiled biblical conviction.

When she sings on the album's first track, after all, 'Awaken my heart, awaken my soul, awaken your power and take control', she is not singing to the handsome guy across the room. She's crying out to recognizable and well-defined God.

Then she pops you in the face with the utter theological simplicity that follows the manic intro to 'Something Beautiful'. What say we begin with the mania?:

'This is a song for anyone whose ever been
knocked down ; can't get back again
Stuck in the corner, can't move forward
All alone and you think you're going nowhere
This is a song for anyone whose ever stood
underneath the sun and felt so small-
two feet tall and so out of place.'

After an intro like that with perhaps a few too many intimations of girly-pop, where does a song like this go? On to feel-good, self-absorbed truisms with a nice guitar riff for distraction?

No. Not this time.

Instead, this biblically-informed terseness:

'He sees you - he knows you - he loves you
and he wants you to know that'

That's all. In the biblical dialect of divine-human relationship, that is considered sufficient. Grant seems to agree. Refreshing, that. Strengthening too. 'Sets a man to singin', even.

But she's only getting started here. Though she has that rising-farther-than-you-thought-she-was-gonna'-go quality to her voice, she becomes a formidable artist when she sings out of the kind of suffering that one is not supposed to know about while still young.

There is no doubt that Ms. Grant has a fine set of pipes. She's convinced you of that before you're a minute into this CD. In fact, one can go four or five tracks wondering what a pianissimo would sound like here and whether we're going to have one of those before we finish.

But she comes into her own when she gets introspective and balladesque without losing her theological compasspoint. This happens for the first time in 'The Real Me', a song that teeters dramatically on the razor edge of narcissism before rescue by an impulse that must owe something--consciously or not--to Psalmody. What I mean is that 'But you see the real me' is counterpoint to all manner of self-description. Grant seems to have come to terms with the biblical affirmation that her Christian faith calls her not to gnostic self-annihilation in favor of the soul, but rather to an authentic assumption of her Redeemer's intention for her. For *her*, we might place an accent. Listen:

'But you see see the real me.
Hiding in my skin, broken from within.
Unveil me completely
I'm loosening my grasp,
There's no need to mask my frailty
Cause you see the real me ...

Wonderful, beautiful is what you see
When You look at me.
You've turned the tattered fabric of my life
Into a perfect tapestry.
Oh, I just wanna' be me,
I wanna' be me.'

This is miles and miles from the self-referential and self-realizing ethos of popular myth. On the contrary one smells, from a certain distance to be sure, the distintive scent of a theology of creation.

Hmm ... 'Smells good.

Ms. Grant works through a couple of other tunes before coming to the showstopper, the one that is worth the price of the entire shiny little disk, and then some.

'Held' articulates the chastened, half-broken faith that emerges only from suffering. It's something you're not supposed to know about while you're still young. In the tradition of Job ('The Lord gave, the Lord took away, blessed be the name of the Lord') and the cross-shadowed path, one comes to terms with a God whose goodness is often invisible even if not ephemeral.

A child has died. That's all we know. Grant sings:

'Two months is too little.
They let him go.
The had no sudden healing.
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling.

Who told us we'd be rescued?
What has changed and why should be saved from nightmares?
We're asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It's unfair.

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.'

There is more on this album. Much more. But after 'Held', it is anticlimax and afterword, though it is good music.

The only bad thing about this CD is that we may need to await another ten years before one like it comes along.

Every once in a great while a musical artist has come into my life and grabbed my intellect and emotions. In the past its been Judy Collins then Nanci Griffith and later Alison Krauss. One day I heard Natalie Grant's "Held" on Sirius radio's Spirit channel and was swept away. This has got to be one of the most beautiful recording ever made. I got the album "Awaken" the next day and there are songs on the album that are already among my all time favorites....especially "The Real Me" and "Home". This is a truly gifted artist who can phrase a lyric with incredible tenderness yet belt out with the best of them. I have not traditionally sought out Christian Music but Natalie Grant grabbed my heart and attitude toward Faith. I have a feeling that's just what she wanted to do....she is now on the above select list of artists that will forever move me....not
bad company at all.

I have persistently purchased CDs by Natalie Grant because it is hard to not acknowledge the God-gven talent she has been given; however, with every purchase, I felt mostly disappointment. There were maybe two or three songs that were enjoyable to listen to. Usually one song that I would put on repeat. This CD is a very different story. I can honestly say that this is one of the best CDs that I currently own. It is a refreshing new approach to displaying Natalie Grant's undeniable vocal talent, which is to sing great and memorable songs. I have also had trouble with shallow lyrics in her past albums; this CD is very deep and theologically sound. A few songs stand out: "The Real Me," "Held," and "Make me Over" are beautiful and touching. I would recommend this to just about anyone.

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