Bishop Andrew Merritt & the Straight Gate Mass Choir – Saturate Us

Bishop Andrew Merritt &
The Straight Gate Mass Choir
Saturate Us
Bajada Records (release date: December 22, 2015)
www.saturateus.com

By Bob Marovich

The praise and worship choir, which one could argue was pioneered in the 1980s by Carol Cymbala and the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, tempers the soul-stirring sounds of the gospel choir by employing fewer vocal acrobatics and blue notes, but maintaining the latter’s thunderous fervor.

This choral style is ubiquitous in gospel music these days, but Detroit’s Straight Gate Mass Choir, under the leadership of Bishop Andrew Merritt, was among the first to bring it into the urban church. Making records since 2000—its first, Faith in the House, hit the Billboard 200—the choir released its latest project, Saturate Us, at the end of 2015.

On Saturate Us, Straight Gate Mass Choir shows itself to be as richly voiced and spit-polished as Brooklyn Tab, with the rough edges smoothed and the lyrics a litany of praises and positive affirmations. The songs are melodic and robust or gentle at turns.  The album is well-paced, with songs blending one into another just as they do during a live program. The opening three songs set a vigorous pace that slows with “Nothing But the Blood” and “Showing Me Mercy,” where the harmonies saturate the music like a gentle mist. The pulse picks up again for the mid-tempo “Most Holy God,” which concludes the hour-plus presentation.

The title track is the album’s best selection. It is a melodic ballad with a request for God to do more than bless us, but inhabit us fully—body, heart, mind, and soul. “Worthy is the Lamb” is one of those lovely, hypnotic-to-a-whisper, delicate praise songs that could go on forever, and does for more than eight minutes, though it said everything it needed to say by the six minute mark.

Vocalists Jaye Thomas, Marcus Cole, Ladon Ford, Nehru Shumake, and Pam English spice up the selections that they lead. So do the charming interpolations of old church hymns into the newly-composed songs.

Saturate Us is an accomplished album by an accomplished choir.

Four of Five Stars

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