Even though it’s still warm outside and Labor Day is still several days away, a Christmas album is giving me an excuse to write about one of my favorite and most thoughtful Christian music performers, Sara Groves.
Groves has announced she will release her first album of Christmas music, “O Holy Night,” on INO Records on Oct. 14.
It was originally intended as an advent album for her family, but as she began working on it, the Minnesota mom/performer decided to release it to the public at large
She includes some of her favorite songs about her family’s Christmas traditions, and also plans four originals.
The sacred Christmas songs are to include “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” the last one recorded with family and friends gathered around, singing together.
I’ve liked Groves’ clear, easy-to-take voice and thoughtful lyrics of her faith throughout her decade on the Christian music scene.
My personal favorite is 1999’s “Conversations,” which has great songs like the title track, “Painting Pictures of Egypt” about how all of us don’t like to venture out into the unknown, and the great “How Is It Between Us?”
Or maybe it’s “All Right Here” from 2002, which has the heady, but still catchy, “Less Like Scars.” Groves shows in this song that she clearly has something to say:
“It seemed out of my hands
a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
look less like scars and more like character
Less like a prison a prison more like my room
Less like a casket more like a womb
Less like dying more like transcending
Less like fear, less like an ending
And I feel you here …”
And she says it well, as anyone who’s heard her sing would agree.
See www.saragroves.com for more.
For now, it looks like the closest this talented singer/songwriter will come to us is at Messiah College, just west of us, where Groves performs with her “Art-Music-Justice” Tour on Saturday, Oct. 4.