‘There Is a Great Desire in All Souls for What Is Good and Beautiful’

The BENEDICTINES OF MARY, QUEEN OF APOSTLES are back with another moving seasonal epistle to follow last year's chart busting Angels and Saints. LENT AT EPHESUS, the sisters' new album, is a true sacred masterpiece.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Do Right Woman, Do Right Man

No longer incommunicado, BILL POWERS and SHELLEY GRAY are back with some friends as HONEY DON'T. The group's second album, HEART LIKE A WHEEL, is a solid advance over the group's 2009 self-titled debut.
by David McGee
 

 

 

Exquisite

Jazz pianist THOMAS SNOW goes Americana on his memorable new album, FRIENDS, and gets a major assist in his efforts from singer-songwriter JONATHAN EDWARDS and mandolin master JOE WALSH. This is one of 2013's major roots finds.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Love Is a Many-Splintered Thing

Herein a dozen smokey, sensuous and often ambivalent discourses on love and passion delivered with the breathy tenderness and sublime understatement of someone defining love not as a many-splendored thing, but rather as a many-...
by David McGee
 

 

 

You Have Come to The World. I Pour Out Praise for You.

BENEDICTINES OF MARY, QUEEN OF APOSTLES have created their third classic Christmas album in CAROLING AT EPHESUS. All proceeds go the order's building projects.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Fashioning a More Thoughtful World

Scottish classical guitarist SEAN SHIBE, playing with lovely clarity and thoughtfulness, adds his own innate sense of the elegant to a trio of BACH lute compositions he has seamlessly transposed to his own instrument.
by David McGee
 

 

 

The Knight of Faith

In his first recordings since his wife's death, MIKE ZITO shares some profound reflections, his own and others'.
by David McGee
 

 
 

The Game of Love

BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE Brennen Leigh & Noel McKay B&N In a world festering with male-female duos, Austin’s Brennen Leigh & Noel McKay have some clear advantages over the competition. For starters, their dress i...
by David McGee
 

 

 

Under the Skin, Into the Heart

Nashville's McCrary Sisters--progeny of Fairfield Four founding member Rev. Samuel McCrary, have issued one of this year's most uplifting and stirring statements with their second album, ALL THE WAY. They'll take you there.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Tested In the Furnace of Affliction

SAM BUTLER, former lead guitarist with the Blind Boys of Alabama, makes his solo debut with a most unusual spiritual album--with songs by Springsteen, Waits, Curtis Mayfield, Johnny Cash, et al.
by David McGee
 

 

 

It Might As Well Be Spring

Although it was not be design, noted jazz drummer-arranger-composer JERRY KALAF seems to have found the essence of Springtime on his pastoral new album, WELCOME TO EARTH
by David McGee
 

 
 

But Beautiful

A pair of albums designed to spur reflection share ALBUM OF THE WEEK honors: NEARNESS, a classy batch of standards by TINA BRUHN and JOHNNY O'NEAL, and BEATLERIANAS by Carlos Barbosa-Lima & The Havant String Quartet
by David McGee