Worship music has recently taken the Christian music industry by storm. Enter Justin McRoberts. And a breath of fresh air. Untitled EP is his third album and most definitely a step in a different direction. While the liner notes bare the 5 Minute Walk logo, it's more of an independent CD. It's also only available on McRoberts' website and at his concerts. The packaging is also rather sparse, which doesn't mean cheap. Simple might be a better word.
All of this points to the nature of the music. It's stripped down. It's raw. It's honest. Most songs feature McRoberts and his acoustic guitar. Occasionally there's a piano, and maybe some background vocals, but that's it. There's a paragraph on the back of the liner notes that explains:
"The rough feel of the tracks is, in a way, a statement; worship does not have to show up in a nice package. The recent popularity of 'worship' music has, I believe, caused a confusion of sorts. A band does not have to rock or be excellent to lead worship. Performance is an added bonus, but should not be a distraction from the intention of a church service. Worship is intimacy with God, and music can be used to facilitate that experience, but if the emphasis is on how the music sounds, all we get is distracted, or, at best, emotional."
That basically means if you're looking for the next radio single or a really rocking worship CD, you've come to the wrong place. But if you're looking for humble, honest music that truly draws your attention above, and not to the actual music, you've discovered gold. These are simple choruses sung with passion. It's almost like you're sitting around the campfire with Justin, singing songs into the darkness. The recording isn't perfect, and the performance isn't either. But that's not the point.
The CD has a slower pace than McRoberts' previous work, which will leave some fans disappointed. But there's a few rising choruses, including 'All I Want,' 'King of Mercy,' and 'I Give You My Life.' There's also some poignant lines, including a needed perspective on worship in 'Making Noises': "Lord I give you my all / Cuz I don't know what I'm doing anymore / Lord I give you my all / Cuz I don't want to just be making noises."
As a worship CD, Untitled EP is refreshing. As a Justin McRoberts CD, it's not exactly what you'd expect. It lacks the down-home, on the street reality of McRoberts' past work, which unfortunately, is a flaw of most worship music. For some reason worship music can only talk about intangible concepts with less than tangible language. Apparently God is too holy for the problems and concerns of life in the twenty-first century. But that's a critique of the worship genre, and not McRoberts' Untitled EP alone. It's simply a regret that Untitled EP didn't stray as far as it could from the confines of the worship genre.
It's an honest and intimate album that won't please everyone and doesn't want to.
