Reviewed by Dustin Helgeson

The veteran Scot's 17th album offers some encouraging, gospel flavored soft pop. There is some good diversity of sounds on ‘Rise up’. Ian White uses a choir to back him up on nearly every track and instrumentation and arrangements work well. “Moment Of Truth” is a nice song declaring, “You’ve called me to be a worshiper.” A quiet bed of driving electric guitar is supported by nice acoustic guitar on which White’s voice sounds great. This is one of a number of tracks, however, where a choir feels out of place. It isn’t always bad though; it adds great flavour and great fun when used in the right places. An example of this is “For Love To Come”, a fun song of corporate pep rally worship: “We’re glad we came/as worship begins/We’re joining in with the angels praise/We want to taste your life/We want to ask you Lord/For love to come.” The anthemic song “Totally Back” features a nice solo on electric guitar. The production and arrangements on this album are good, but Ian’s vocal performance feels like it lacks the same excitement and conviction of some of his backing choir.

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