Reviewed by Ewan Jones

One of the first things to strike me about this album by Yorkshire-based duo Lisa Lee and Cat Bentham was the truthful, gospel-centered lyrics - although they do occasionally stray into cliché, they are befitting of a duo who call themselves Honest - focusing on church ministry but reaching both Christians and unbelievers. I'm sure that God uses them to witness to his faithfulness in their lives. Lisa performs all of the vocals and shares some of the songwriting credit, while Cat writes the majority of the songs and plays piano and flute. Accompanied on the occasional track by guitar (and sometimes by drum tracks that don't quite work), the girls offer 14 original songs plus a beautiful rendition of the hymn "Just As I Am" that serves as a strong opener. Unfortunately, the songs do begin to blend into each other after a while, highlighting the main problem with this project - its lack of variety. The majority of the tunes have a similar pace and feel and it becomes increasingly hard to differentiate between them. More tracks do not always mean better value, particularly for new artists. What to leave off can be a hard decision but ultimately achieves a more focussed end result. It sounds as if a few of the tracks were recorded in different sessions and they are almost always key tracks to leave off or keep for a separate release. This could have been an excellent eight track mini-album instead of this 15 track epic that begins to tire.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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