Published on Jun 13, 2000
Oh, great. Just what the world needed — the contemporary
Christian version of the Backstreet Boys.
I have to admit at the start of this review that I am not a
lover of contemporary Christian music. I just find the majority of
the music to be too preachy, or too cheerleader-like (“Yay,
Jesus!”) I once had a friend who went from agnostic to becoming a
born-again Christian who always insisted on playing the latest
stuff she got from the Christian bookstore for me. Damn near drove
me nuts — until she ended the friendship, claiming I was unhealthy
for her. But she’d put stuff on, telling me, “This is the religious
version of Nine Inch Nails.” No offense, honey, but if I wanted to
listen to Nine Inch Nails, I’d listen to the real thing, and not a
photocopy.
Plus One is definitely one such band that my ex-friend would
have tried to play their album
The Promise for me at some point. Just like other boy bands,
Plus One has it all, except for two things: they include God in
many of their songs, and there’s not as much vocal harmonies as I
would have preferred to hear. But to their credit, they keep the
prophetizing down pretty much, and have created an album that will
blend well with the others in the genre. Unfortunately, it’s not
spectacular enough to make it stand out.
The quintet — Jeremy Mhire, Jason Perry, Nate Cole, Gabe Combs
and Nathan Walters- – do have decent sets of pipes. If only they
utilized them more. I, for one, happen to like hearing harmony
vocals; that’s why bands like Backstreet Boys are palatable to me.
But there’s hardly any real harmonizing going on here. Mistake.
Hearing a mush of vocals at times tends to distract from the
overall picture, and I know this was not the band’s intention. (I
lent this CD to a co-worker of mine who is also a born-again – and
her comments about the lack of harmonization echoed mine. Her
words? “Their voices sound flat.”)
And, while I’m doing everything I can to keep my biases out of
the review and focus strictly on the music, parts of
The Promise are a little too “yay, God” for me. Tracks like
“God Is In This Place,” “My Life” and the title track all focus on
the importance of a relationship with God, no matter what you’re
doing in life. And while I give the band credit for keeping things
toned down, it still got on my nerves.
Yet, there are moments on
The Promise that suggest that Plus One could gain a pretty
decent sized fan base. Tracks like “Written On My Heart,” “I Will
Rescue You” and “Here In My Heart” are the kind of songs that could
easily work their way onto the radio and into the hearts of a
gaggle of pre-teen girls yearning for the next pin-up kings. But
they are indeed musically sound, and would not be out of place next
to the latest cuts from groups like ‘N Sync.
But Plus One is still very much growing into their shoes, and
there are some potholes that will need to be smoothed out. Three
words: “Last Flight Out”. ‘Nuff said.
The Promise could be seen as another disc in the
already-crowded market of boy bands, or it could be seen as the
religious or safe answer to some of the music on the radio. Or, you
can look at it as the work of a group that has potential, but still
needs a bit of seasoning. For a CCM Backstreet Boys clone, they
were better than I could have anticipated. Just don’t ask me to
review the CCM version of Britney Spears.