This year, a full 15 years after this band's first record barreled onto our turntables, this CD collection gives us the best of Lone Justice's two albums, and a few live tracks, one new cut, and enough pure energy to make me turn my stereo up too loud for the first time in years. The individual members of The Ragamuffins had critically acclaimed solo careers and bands for most of the '90s, but it was in coming together to support and serve their friend, the late Rich Mullins, first as his band and then as his legacy, that this quartet found its stride. If the Rags' first post-Mullins disc, last year's The Jesus Record , set the bar for thoughtful, passionate, intimate and compelling Christian pop music, this followup, released the last week of the decade, meets or exceeds it on every level. The reinvigorated Jars are just as pious as on their first two discs, but this time they offer a Sgt. Peppers-heavy sound that suggests a future in music, not just in church.
Some songs are sentimental old fools, and some songs take sentimentalists for fools.
It is far too typical of Christian music's failsafe sentimentality. Fundamentally cynical, this song doesn't trust its listeners, their experiences, or their emotions, and so rather than evoke genuine feeling from them, it manufactures it for them, and leaves them no choice how to feel, react or think. Too bad, too, from an artist whose previous records have been as raw and real as polished pop allows. Dwight Ozard is music critic for Prism magazine and Director of Public Affairs for Habitat for Humanity.