Brian Craig’s CD “Remain in Me” contains grooves and enjoyable music with messages sung from the perspective of Jesus.
When I first heard about the concept of Brian Craig’s latest CD work, “Remain in Me” (released August 2007) I was very excited to hear it. It seemed like a very challenging, but creative concept, this CD has songs sung from the perspective of Jesus Christ, telling the story of His ministry from the start through His death, resurrection, and ascension. It’s a very challenging thing to try to follow that vision in a CD of 13 songs, but Brian does it nicely here. The song titles themselves follow some great themes of Jesus’ ministry and stick to this general theme quite well.
Finally getting enough time set aside to listen at one shot to the CD enough times (sorry it took so long), you can definitely hear Brian’s talent as a songwriter and musician in this CD. To write a whole CD of songs that stick to the general theme so well is pretty impressive in and of itself. In general, the songs have a great feel to them. First impressions is that this is a good CD to play in your car on a trip and is very enjoyable to listen to during a personal time of worship, quiet time, or a time when you can really focus on the words.
The songs are rich lyrically and strong on message, and sometimes the words do seem to get lost a little bit in the music. During the first half of the CD there can seem to be so much instrumentation, or so much going on in a given song, that the words were hard for me to grab on to as a casual listener, and I had to work pretty hard to hear the message. Since it seems that the message was the most important part of the songs, I really wanted it to be easier to connect to the lyrics. A couple of very well done exceptions to this were “Strong as Death” and “Why Have You Forsaken Me”. The instrumentation is much simpler, and there was enough space that I was able to connect with the lyrics much easier, which are very moving regarding Jesus on the cross. Another great song was “Free From the Grave”, it has a great hook and the line “…free from the grave…” really gets into your head and he does a great job building the rest of the song from there. It’s so catchy and upbeat; you can’t help but feel encouraged after listening.
He also does a great job integrating different music styles. It’s mostly a pop CD, but there’s a great mix of pop/rock/latin sounds in the song “You’re Not Alone”, and it has such a different feel that it really complements the rest of the CD.
Brian Craig fans will definitely enjoy his latest work (and from the comments on his website many fans already are), and those unfamiliar to his music also have many things they can like about this CD (especially if you like upbeat, popular music style). The grooves and the messages are strong in this CD and you’ll enjoy it. I also think that this album would make a great live CD or even DVD, since the themes are so connected, you could have some great moments during a live set or with more visuals (music videos or just live) with this concept to draw even more attention to the lyrics/messages of the songs.
You can find this and other CD’s by Brian Craig on Rhapsody, iTunes, and can hear what others are saying about this CD as well as purchase it via CD Baby from the Brian Craig official website: http://www.jbriancraig.com. Check it out today and enjoy!
Editor’s Note: If you like the songs please purchase the CD and support your favorite Christian artist…that’s the only way they can continue to do this work. Also, the author did not receive any compensation for this review, except for a free CD for the purpose of this review. This is strictly the author’s non-expert opinion.
