Album: “Thrive”

Description

Personnel: Phil Joel (vocals, guitar, bass); Peter Furler (vocals, guitar, drums); Jody Davis (vocals, guitar); Jeff Frankenstein (keyboards, programming); Duncan Phillips (drums, percussion). Additional personnel includes: Jeff Coffin (baritone saxophone); Dan Rudin (congas, vocoder, percussion); Eric Darken (drums, percussion). Producers: Steve Taylor, Peter Furler, Joe Baldridge. Engineers: Joe Baldridge, Dan Rudin, Russ Long. Recorded at Bridge Street Studios, Dark Horse Studios, Sound Kitchen Studio, Franklin, Tennessee, Ocean Way Studios and Whistler's Music, Nashville, Tennessee. More than just a Christian boy band, the Newsboys bring some much-needed raunch into the hitherto squeaky-clean world of Christian rock with a belated follow up to 1999's LOVE LIBERTY DISCO. Perhaps such irreverence emanates from the antipodean background of four-fifths of the band's personnel, but this refreshing collection of ballsy Christian pop (a phrase you probably never dreamed you'd be reading) flies in the face of the po'-faced religious idealism that's usually a staple of the genre. "Live in Stereo" is almost glam rock in the style of '70s British popsters Sweet, and the infernally catchy album opener "Giving It Over" further mines the band's rich Britpop seam. There's a brief hiatus while the band go all U2-like on "It Is You," but it's soon back to the main business of rowdy religiosity, via the massive pop onslaught of "Cornelius" and the driving old-school R&B of "The Fad of the Land." THRIVE is a welcome comeback for this innovative and energetic band who prove here that Christian rock doesn't have to be a contradiction in terms.