The first My Utmost For His Highest album was an obvious hit. With almost all of the major "super-stars" of Christian music, it was certain to fly up the charts. And fly it has! At press time, this album was quickly approaching the highly-honored "gold album" mark, not often reached by Christian albums. Myrrh Records knew that they had a good thing, and what does anyone try to do with a good thing? Why, duplicate it, of course!
Well, they haven't been exactly successful with duplicating the greatness of the first album. Don't get me wrong, this is still a very good album; it just had a really high bar to try to vault over. This recording feels more like a "filling in the spaces" kind of project. Michael W. Smith is the only artist who makes a return, probably because he wrote many of the songs for both albums.
While this album "fills in the spaces" left by its predecessor, it seems to have ignored other aspects. There are just too many holes that can be punched in this recording. For instance, BeBe Winans starts things off with a great song, "All of Me." No one would contest the fact that he has a great voice, but most people agree that he sounds best when matching harmonies with his sister CeCe, who is nowhere to be found. It's things like that and the lack of the really "big names" from the first project (Amy Grant, Gary Chapman, Steven Curtis Chapman) that make this album not quite sit right. All this is not to say that there aren't some really great songs here.
Overall, the whole album is more orchestra-based than the original. Where My Utmost For His Highest had omni-present string arrangements, My Utmost For His Highest: The Covenant gets omni-orchestrated, especially on the two instrumental tracks. My favorite tracks on the album are "Make It A Promise" by Clay Crosse and "We Will Follow You" by John Elefante and Lisa Bevill. The former is simply-done and dominated by Crosse's spectacular voice. John Elefante has a great voice as well, but with his high screams I would think he would be a hard person to find a duet partner for. These concerns went out the window as Lisa Bevill met Elefante note for note in heavenly harmony.
One last hole to be poked in this album is Michael W. Smith's re-arrangement of "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" with Anointed. It's a good arrangement, and Smith sounds great with Anointed. But this song sounds way too much like a rip-off of when it was perfected in Sister Act 2. No, there's no rap verse or secular songs worked into the theme, but it follows the exact same "classic hymn sounding" beginning to a hyper beat after the first verse. I would have liked it a lot more if Smith had reworked a different hymn.
The bottom line is that this is a really good album. I would suggest that anyone who liked the first album take a serious look at this new one. But I wouldn't be totally against a letter writing campaign to Myrrh asking them not to go too far with this My Utmost For His Highest thing.
