Review

Tim Hughes is holding nothing back with his latest release "Holding Nothing Back". Once again, Tim proves that he is an extremely talented and anointed songwriter. While some worship artist may keep cranking out CD after CD, Tim takes a different approach by releasing his CDs every couple of years. In fact, "Holding Nothing Back" is only Hughes' third CD in six years. Listen to his CDs and you realize that Tim puts great emphasis on developing a song, letting it stew and allowing it to go through the aging process before committing it forever to a CD. The songs on this new CD are examples of that. "Holding Nothing Back" is wall-to-wall full of strong, solid songs. Just what you would expect from the author of "Here I Am To Worship", "Beautiful One", and "Consuming Fire".

The CD leaves the starting gate with a couple of anthems beginning with the catchy rock/pop "Happy Day" and into the equally contagious 6/8 "The Highest and The Greatest". The CD slows down by the song "Everything" which is, in my opinion, the best Tim Hughes song written since "Beautiful One". The CD continues on with praise, worship, fast songs, slow songs, powerful and gentle songs displaying a great variety of styles and worship themes. But somewhere in the middle of the CD, a different kind of song occurs. The song is called "God Of Justice" which deals with the theme of social justice and the call to expand our worship actions beyond just singing to include taking the love of Christ to the poor and hungry. It's a well crafted song that it is written from the congregational point of view (employing "us" and "we") bringing the congregation into unity as the lyrics are proclaimed "We must go/live to feed the hungry/stand behind the broken/ we must go" and later in the song the repeating tag which says "Fill us up and send us out". The song is no doubt worshipful and fits well into a worship set.

"Holding Nothing Back" is produced by Nathan Nockles, so the production standard is really high. I must say though, It might be nice to hear other producing talents that are out there take a crack at producing some of these worship CDs from UK worship artists. Nathan Nockles is immensely talented, so this change would simply be for the sake of sonic diversity.

"Holding Nothing Back" is a fantastic CD from all points. As strong as the musicianship and production is, the real strength of this CD lies in songs themselves. Thoughtful and uniquely expressive lyrics abound, as does Tim heart of worship. Hopefully we won't have to wait another two or three years to hear more from Tim Hughes. But then again, good things do come to those wait.

Review by Jeremy Dunn