Chris Clayton

The worship genre is one that has been stuffed full in the CCM world. You have the crop of new worship artists that appear almost yearly, of which few last. Then there was the worship craze that saw almost every established artist suddenly decide their past work wasn’t worshipful enough and they just had to record the same few worship songs on albums devoted solely to vertical worship content. With all of this going on, one might wonder if there are any new ideas that can come out of artists creating vertically themed worship albums or whether continuing will just make one more cynical towards the realm of worship as a whole. That being said, another, “up and coming worship leader”, has emerged, and his name is, Chris Clayton, the album is, All These Things And More.

It’s sometimes hard to know how to approach a worship album as a critic. On the one hand, you assume the motives of the artist are genuine and sincere and don’t really expect it to break any creative bounds musically. It is, after all, mostly intended for corporate worship, which means that the music needs to be easily digestible when dealing with people who worship differently, so you have a shortage of crazy musical ideas and there’s really no room for showing off how talented you are. The lyrics also are a lot more straightforward, as a corporate setting for worship isn’t the best place to make everyone scratch their heads over your deep, theological concepts. Therefore, All These Things And More is unsurprising. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a worship album, from the average music to simple lyrics.

That’s not to say that there isn’t anything that stands out about the album. For instance, “God Of This City”, is actually a pretty memorable song, praising Christ as the God of a given city, and that because of this, “Greater things are still to be done”. It’s not Earth-shattering, but it’s pretty enjoyable and a highlight. There’s also a fair amount of sincerity in the title track, “All These Things And More”, and, “Happy Day”, the former of which is fun to sing along with and seems set to become a standard for youth services. It also does a nice little change-up to the rhythm right at the end of the chorus for the hook. It’s little things like that which help to distinguish these songs from each other.

It’s when Clayton slows down that his songs become less interesting. Take “You Are”, which is a fairly mundane ballad that doesn’t bring as much of the passion that the highlights had, due mainly to the cliché lyrics and an overly sappy musical backdrop. “Song Of Hope”, is also rather forgettable, as the U2-esque soundscape sounds like a Chris Tomlin B-side. It also kills the momentum despite being a mid-tempo song, since the whole thing is pretty by-the-numbers.

Overall, the album isn’t without merit, especially if you’re a fan of worship music. It’s at least worth checking out for the highlights, even if the lows are rather forgettable. While it doesn’t rank among the great worship albums, there’s nothing truly terrible here; it’s just too middle of the road to be very memorable.

Tagged as: All These Things And More, Chris Clayton

↓ 2 comments

#1 James Roberts on May 24th, 2009 at 4:15 am

I happen to really like this album and Chris is a GREAT worship leader!

#2 Brenden on May 25th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

I don’t doubt either of those things.

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