Bethel Music “Without Words: Synesthesia” Album Review

 

Prime Cuts: Oceans (Where Feet May Fail), Ever Be, It is Well

Our appreciation quotient of Bethel Music's latest instrumental album is directly proportional to how well we know the portfolio of the church worship team.  If you have never picked up any of their last four albums, listening to this album may sound like muzak to you.  This is because the swirling synth and glowing strings have a way of sweeping over us meshing all the songs together that you can't tell when one song ends and when the other begins.  If you are not familiar with Bethel Music's recent catalog, the best to start is by purchasing their regular non-instrumental offerings.  However, if you are familiar with their recent worship staples, this CD is a treasure trove.  It will provide for us more than an hour of gorgeous soundtrack to own personal worship.  Many of these songs will evoke in our mind the rich images and words associated with these paeans as we sing and meditate quietly along.

"Without Words: Synesthesia" is the second installation in Bethel Music's canon of instrumental music.  While the first project "Without Words" has a more organic sound, this sophomore effort incorporates more electronic elements and ethereal vocal layering.  Though the track listing may roll call 18 songs, 8 of them are in fact short musical interludes.  As far as the songs proper are concerned, there's only 1 track that has yet to surface on their previous albums, and it's the Redding, California team's cover of Hillsong UNITED's "Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)."  The rest of the tracks in their original versions can be found on Bethel Music's last four albums: "For the Sake of the World" (2012), "Tides" (2013), "You Make Me Brave" (2014) and "We Shall Not be Shaken" (2015).

Let's start with the album's sole "new" track, "Oceans (Where Feet May Fall)."  Never one to be accused of being copycats, Bethel Music has totally re-varnished "Oceans."  Retreating the main melodic line to the background, splashes of synth notes that sound like crashing waves and the soaring stirs of strings that sound like the wind are instead foregrounded.  This creates an ocean-front view for the song as we picture Jesus standing by the shores beckoning us to walk on the water towards Him.  Also, quipped with lots of creativity is "Seas of Crimson."  Instead of just ripping off the vocals, the whole song has been re-constructed around crashing drums and layered echoes as if to bring out the song's lyrics that Christ is our peace even in the mist of the waves and noises of unbelief around us.

Phil Wickham's "This is Amazing Grace," which Bethel Music covered on "For the Sake of the World," is stripped of its rock-ish setting that we are so familiar with.  Rather, it's been re-imagined with an ethereal ambiance with flat-picking sounding drums that is almost a complete makeover.  One of the highlights from the "You Make Me Brave" album is "Ever Be."  While the original is donned as a big ballad with enormous belts, here "Ever Be" has a stripped down almost skimpy feel.   "In Over My Head," on the other hand, gets a cinematic treatment that it comes across as a song that you would expect out of a Robert Redford movie.

Thus,  " Without Words: Synesthesia" isn't just your ordinary instrumental album where the original songs are just stripped off the vocals.  Rather, this is a piece of (postmodern) art where splashes of electronic beats, layers of ethereal sounding vocals, and orotund sounding synth lines are creatively interwoven colorfully to create for us moments of worship, relaxation, and mystery. 

 

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