CCM has good niches

The Amazing Grace

John Elefante

This generally hard-rocking progressive-rock project kicks off with a sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it recitation from the Sermon on the Mount, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But some of those parts are impressive. Beatle-esque doors open in “Stronger Now” and “Time Machine,” allowing magical-mystery winds to waft through and keep the inertia to which this sort of music is prone from setting in, while Elefante’s overdubbing himself into a vocal ensemble enlivens the power ballads. Un-overdubbed, his voice remains as strong as it was 40 years ago when he debuted as the lead singer of Kansas. And, yes, you can still detect traces of that band. Only Kansas haters will object.

What Are We Waiting For? 

For King & Country

Joel and Luke Smallbone continue to match melodies and words with an algorithmic precision that could move Silicon Valley execs to jealousy. So what’s with all the auto-tune? Do they really think that it’s necessary to capture the ear of today’s youth? Apparently so, since in “Unsung Hero,” a beautiful and moving song for their father (whose older-generation ears presumably don’t require such techno lubrication), they dispense with the gimmick altogether. Still, it’s a tribute to their song craft and their singing that even with the auto-tune they achieve what all serious pop musicians aim for: songs that embed themselves and play in one’s head long after they’re done playing on one’s device of choice.

Seven

Brooke Ligertwood

A major-label pop star in her native New Zealand for the last 20 years, Brooke Ligertwood (née Fraser) knows her way around a catchy hook and an attention-getting lyric. So it’s no surprise that the songs that she and her husband Scott have assembled for her first “praise and worship” album are a cut above the norm, borrowed elements (such as the echoey, Joshua Tree-like propulsion of “Ancient Gates”) and all. What is surprising is the turn to introspection that the album takes halfway through. Despite being performed onstage before an audience, “Communion (Meditation)” (an instrumental), “Nineveh” (Ligertwood makes an especially convincing Jonah), and “Burn” take on the intimacy of a still, small voice.

Brighter Days

Blessing Offor

This alumnus of The Voice and Platinum Hit crafts inspirational pop just generic enough not to alienate fans turned off by explicitly Christian messaging. Yet none of these six songs (plus the “radio version” of the title track) sound calculated. Instead, they sound like the natural expression of a compassionate soul determined to meet troubled people where they are because he has been there too. And he has. Blind since childhood, “he wants,” says The Voice’s website, “to prove that one can achieve one’s dreams despite adversity.” His singing is flexible yet firm enough to show the gospel chord changes to which he’s partial who’s boss. And his 2015 purely pop album Roots isn’t exactly chopped liver.

Encore

Larry Norman’s Only Visiting This Planet, a record long considered the best Christian-rock platter ever recorded, turns 50 this year. As of this writing, neither Norman’s Bandcamp page nor larrynorman.com has teased anniversary editions, but the album, deluxe reissues of which already exist, hardly needs one. Artfully conceived and flawlessly executed, it not only reflected the contentiousness of the U.S. circa 1972 but also, in “Why Don’t You Look into Jesus?” and “The Outlaw,” tendered a solution.

Some details haven’t aged well. The three-network roll call in “I Am the Six O’Clock News” could use expanding, the socio-political clichés underlying approximately half of “The Great American Novel” are naïve even for clichés, and “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” can still awaken memories of the 1970’s Rapture craze. But because the U.S. remains contentious, and because the solution remains the same, the majority of the album’s songs sound as ­relevant as—and in some ways more relevant than—ever. —A.O.