'Compassionart brings together choirs, worship leaders and Christian music artists from Britain, America and Australia.'

George Luke reviews the best new Christian music albums. Use the links to buy the albums and Christian Aid gets some of your money

• Compassionart, Martin Smith

In January last year, Delirious’ Martin Smith and a handful of Christian music’s best-known artists spent a week hidden away in Scotland, composing music with the aim of funding social action projects in some of the world’s poorest nations.

I’ve been dying to hear what sort of music they came up with ever since. Thankfully, the wait is now over. Compassionart (subtitled “Creating freedom from poverty”), brings together choirs, worship leaders and Christian music artists from Britain, America and Australia.

Uganda’s Watoto Children’s Choir join Martin Smith and Chris Tomlin on the opening track “Come to the Water”, which also features Kirk Franklin in fiery ‘preacher’ mode. Martin also duets with CeCe Winans on “Fill My Cup”, a smoking piece of blues-gospel.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more potent fusion of worship and social action than Compassionart. And it’s a cracking album too!

• Acoustic Gospel Vol. 2, Rockhill

Like Compassionart, London’s Rockhill Music stable are another bunch of gifted people using music to fund social action.

Rockhill’s Acoustic Gospel Vol 2 features contributions from a number of British gospel artists, both established and new – including Zoe Oputah, winner of Christian Aid’s Harmonise Gospel talent search.

The album’s title is a bit of a misnomer, as several of its tracks are anything but acoustic (way too much electric guitar and synths in the mix for that).

But the musicianship and vocals are consistently high quality, and the songs fresh and exciting. All that, and Christian Aid gets some money from proceeds from the album’s sales! What’s not to like?

• The Best Yet, Switchfoot

Switchfoot are probably the only band that have had both a string quartet and a choir of children record tribute albums to them (maybe that’s not such a bad thing, now I think of it).

Thankfully, the band’s own greatest hits compilation, The Best Yet, is completely free of gimmicks and novelties. About a third of the 18 tracks featured here are from 2005’s The Beautiful Letdown album – including the song “Meant to Live”, which became an international hit after its inclusion in the Spider Man 2 film soundtrack.

I’m slightly disappointed that they didn’t throw in their cover of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love”. Still, I can always look up the video on Youtube …

• Limbs and Branches, Jon Foreman

Surprise, surprise – there’s another Switchfoot-related compilation album out (I’ll try to avoid making the obvious ‘waiting for a bus’ analogy). Last year, lead singer Jon Foreman released four solo EPs, each taking one season of the year as its theme.

Jon’s new album, Limbs & Branches, is made up 12 songs taken (or stolen, as Jon puts it in the liner notes) from those EPs. Amongst the songs that made the cut are his interpretations of the Lord’s Prayer (“Your Love is Strong”), the 23rd Psalm (“House of God Forever”) and Amos’ lambasting of shallow worship and injustice (“Instead of a Show”).

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