I Heart Revolution
Time for a quick music recommendation. Mostly I’ve been listening to bluegrass lately (especially the brilliant young mandolinist Chris Thile) but this CD is worth a mention – Hillsong United’s latest – The I Heart Revolution Part I – With Hearts As One. I picked it up today whilst we were visiting my brother’s church for a child dedication.
Despite the convoluted title, this is a great album. Essentially it’s like a live ‘greatest hits’ package from Hillsong United, with two full 
discs of tracks recorded in various locations on every continent (wish our worship band could go on tour like that… lol). Although the locations vary, the album flows seamlessly between tracks (and in some cases even within tracks). For the past few years I’ve found that the majority of the good songs to come out of Hillsong have originated on the United youth albums and this album distills most of the best of those songs into the one package. The recording quality is excellent (as usual for Hillsong) but retains an authentic live feel, and it’s nice to hear some fresh versions of some familiar songs. Pleasingly for me, United’s music is very much guitar driven, and the guitars cut through here even more strongly than usual – they’ve really captured some brilliant guitar tones. These CDS will be on high rotation for me for a long time I think (along with all the bluegrass stuff of course, and Dream Theater’s Greatest Hit, which I picked up the other day). Without a doubt Hillsong United are putting out some of the best worship music on the planet.
This album is just the first part of this ‘I Heart Revolution’ project from United. I’m not clear on the details of this but it seems to involve a heavy emphasis on missions and justice issues as part of their world touring. Nice to see this sort of emphasis coming strongly out of Hillsong (you can hear it in a lot of the lyrics as well) and especially the youth. It’s only as the church gets fired up that issues of poverty and justice are going to be more effectively addressed, and I think that Christian youth will be in the vanguard of this – look forward to seeing where it all leads.
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