CD Review: Austin Family & Friends

Experience the Impossible
Austin Family & Friends
JCA Records 2005
www.jamesaustinjr.com

Experience the Impossible is a locally-produced album by the family and friends of Rev. James C. and Vernesta T. Austin, the pastor and first lady respectively of St. Luke Church of God in Christ in Chicago.

Reading COGIC and music in the same sentence usually brings to mind an exuberant, frenetic style of gospel, but the Austin Family’s sound is different from that. It is quieter and more delicate, a musical cousin of the work of Andrae Crouch, also from a COGIC family.

This fresh-faced project by the young Austin Family is cool down music, buoyed by the stylish piano jazz of James, Jr., whose talent is spotlighted on “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” an instrumental solo that reminded me of young Erroll Garner during his Savoy Records days.

While “Risen,” with its bossa nova rhythm and Eric Austin’s pleasant singing, is interesting, by far the album’s best track is “The Impossible,” which showcases the pretty, lithe voice of Lawanda Campbell accompanied by Luke J. Austin II on organ. Eventually the voice-organ duet dissolves into a full-on vocal vamp by the ensemble. “The Impossible” also possesses the churchiest sound of all the cuts on the album.

Bottom line? The music on Experience the Impossible is as wholesome and charming as the young singers themselves.