At a time when the buzz phrase “safe spaces” has made many universities seem like day care centers, it’s important to remember that the term’s biblical equivalent has quite different connotations.

“Thou art my hiding place,” sang David in Psalm 32, “thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.” And in Psalm 107: “He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.”

Those psalms are two of the poetic Old Testament texts on which singer-songwriter Wendell Kimbrough has based his latest collection of deliverance songs, Psalms We Sing Together (Wendell Kimbrough).

The album’s official purpose is to provide churches with biblically based music suitable for congregational singing. (Lyrics, guitar chords, and sheet music are available.) Or, as Kimbrough puts it in his liner notes, “These songs were crafted … to help you sing the Psalms.” The album also includes songs based on passages from Isaiah and the explicitly Messianic original “Eternal Weight of Glory.”

One needn’t, however, be a worship leader or in church to enjoy what Kimbrough and his seven fellow musicians and singers have wrought. Given that the opening chords of the lead track, “Then at Last (Psalm 32),” echo those of The Band’s song “The Weight,” being a fan of American roots music may be enough.

“The Band’s Last Waltz concert was an often-cited muse in the studio,” Kimbrough told me. “I told Isaac Wardell [the album’s producer and arranger] that I wanted to make a record that sounded like a 1970s gospel record, like Walter Hawkins’ Love Alive series. Through Isaac’s direction, The Band is where we landed.”

One Last Waltz–like detail Kimbrough and Wardell incorporated was a brass section, adding a Salvation Army brass-band feel to several cuts. But Psalms We Sing Together draws on other traditions as well. The lovely folk melodies of “We Long to See You (Psalm 24)” and “Eternal Weight of Glory,” in particular, evoke such public-domain composer credits as “anon.” and “trad.”

Kimbrough calls such traditional tunes “the ‘holy grail’ for a melody writer.”

“For a tune to have that lifespan, it has to be simple enough to be communicable via oral tradition among people who are not musically educated. But it also has to be inspiring enough that brilliant musicians will write huge, glorious arrangements for it.

“If any of my tunes evoke that tradition, I’m happy.”

Meditative praise

Another gifted melodist known for setting Scripture to music is the Secular Third Order Franciscan John Michael Talbot, whose The Lord’s Supper and Come to the Quiet were among the best-selling CCM albums of 1979 and 1980 respectively.

His new album, The Inner Room (Troubadour/OCP), features the monastic melodies and the meditative acoustic and classical guitar picking (subtly augmented by Phil Keaggy on one song and by Ricky Skaggs on two) long associated with his strongest work. It also includes musical settings of Psalm 27 (“One Thing”) and Psalm 22 (“My God, My God”).

The thematic centerpiece, though, is Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Talbot has based compositions on this passage before (“Behold Now the Kingdom” in 1980; “The Lilies of the Field” in 1981), but not in the minor, Middle Eastern–sounding keys that he uses for this album’s “The Beatitudes,” “Our Father with Doxology,” and title cut.

That this decision emphasizes textural literalness over singalong-ability may put some listeners off. It shouldn’t. Those three songs aside, a prayerful singalong-ability emerges and, ultimately, prevails. —A.O.