Gospel

Marie Knight's "Let Us Get Together" is a soulful gospel album by an artist originally known as Madame Marie Knight. This Brooklyn, New York native also lends a bit of R & B to each tune that brings an ever deeper meaning to each song.

The first track has expressive acoustic guitar as Knight croons such lines as, "Lord I feel like goin' on.

A soothing mixture of feel good songs about the Supreme Being describes Rock Bottom Choir's For All The Saints. "How Great Thou Art, Pt. 2" has organ, piano and drums all going on at once while the vocalist exalts the greatness of Him, with lines like, "How great art thou, for everything you do? How great are thou? How great art thou? How great art thou, for everything you do?" "Mountain" has more drum and guitar work. Its lyrics speak of a stupendous journey that can be construed as either physical or spiritual, with lines like, "From the mountain here we come down.

The third album in the series, State of Grace III, is another tour de force by composer and pianist, Paul Schwartz. The female vocalist who has graced the previous two albums, Lisbeth Scott, intones each song with her saintly voice. Her intonations were also present on the score for the religious saga, The Passion of the Christ. "Christe Redemptor" has Scott's voice echoing for what could seem like miles. "Agnus Dei" fortifies slowly and then brings Schwartz in on the piano and the New Amsterdam Choir joins in to make this song resonate its holy meaning.

Johnny Lang is a very accomplished blues singer and guitarist; however, he is not a gospel singer. On this album Johnny seems to spend too much energy trying to sound like a gospel singer and in that effort some passion is missing. Not to say he is not passionate about the music, but it sounds like he is trying too hard to imitate a certain style and in there the emotions seem to be misdirected and it does not sound like he cares what he's singing about. The album tends to run together and there does not seem to be a lot of variation in tracks.