HighWay Band CD

CD Review: written by Michael Roth, Worship Leader Magazine

Trust

Highway Community - Highway Records

Listening to Trust brings back a fond childhood memory-sitting in a car watching a train go by. It may have been more annoying than I remember it, but there's something about the forced meditation induced by such circumstances, my mind focusing on heaven in the midst of a raucous cacophony of heavy machinery. The music of Trust has the power of that memory-all the trials and troubles it sings about are subsumed in the knowledge of the presence of God and the faith in his loving kindness through it all.

What evokes that image is the alternative rock style of the CD, with its steady, crashing rhythms and the tendency to envelop melody in the trance of bass and guitar. And, like a freight train that runs through the mind, it can evoke songs that can break the heart, make you ponder the weight of the cargo within, and soon have you traveling to an exciting and unknown destination.

Most of the songs on the album were penned by John Riemenschnitter, but it also includes the familiar "Exalt the Lord," the David Ruis favorite, "You Are Worthy of My Praise," and the 1758 hymn "Come Thou Font," dressed in a lumberjack shirt and wool cap. The band executes these admirably, but it is Riemenschnitter's own "The Elusive Freedom," an existential musing on the procrastination of the unbeliever that is the most appealing song of the lot: "There's a yoke that is easy, and a burden that's light/But I'll find it tomorrow, when I've got more time." The arrangements somehow make these songs musically consistent. There are no hooky pop tunes, but they're good songs with a psalmic quality, and they could be performed by a solo voice and an acoustic guitar as easily as by a band.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Riemenschnitter name became one day as familiar as H. J. Deutschendorf's. (Okay, he changed it to John Denver.) And while Riemenschnitter is a lot grungrier and hasn't reached the vocal or songwriting range of Denver, he does come across as the kind of guy with whom you'd let your daughter go out on a date. Okay, maybe the kind of guy you'd let lead your worship service. Gladly. Point your browser to www.highway.org for more information.

-Michael Roth

Worship Leader Magazine

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