Don’t Waste Another Day – James Grear & Company

James Grear & Company
Don’t Waste Another Day
Habakkuk Music 2009
www.myspace.com/jamesgrearandcompany

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota have a thriving gospel music community, and James Grear & Company is one of the reasons why. The group’s latest project, Don’t Waste Another Day, finds the hip ensemble rendering songs by top gospel writers, including Richard Smallwood, Carnell Murrell and VaShawn Mitchell.

Although most of the songs and arrangements on Don’t Waste Another Day fall into a measured or mid-tempo groove, Grear’s cover of Sounds of Blackness’ “Hold On (Change is Coming),” the group’s current single, is buoyant. It reminds me of Grear’s marvelously groovy take on the Youngbloods’ “Get Together” a few years back.

The quartet standard “Trouble In My Way” receives an appropriately traditional foot-stomping, but because its less optimistic lyrics would be out of place on an album titled Don’t Waste Another Day, Greer acknowledges that his interpretation is “moving trouble out of our way.” And that’s what they do: they shout trouble over. By the close, the group chants tunefully “It’s over – He fixed it.”

“Runnin’ Back” is an interesting closer because it showcases an urban side of Grear & Company, complete with PAJAM-style swagger, auto-tune vocals and a rap segment.

The album is most noteworthy, however, for its spotlight on “& Company,” the vocalists in Grear’s ensemble. Together, the group compresses its power into intense, searing harmonies, but their solo turns are what really command attention. On “Your Will,” for example, DeMarcus Green worries the notes to therapy during his aerobic gospel improvisation. Rachel Hurst and Angela Stewart are superb gospel shouters, but hard-singing songstress Willette Blakely turns in the MVP performance. We meet her on Don’t Waste Another Day during her tear through Pharis Evans, Jr.’s “Faithful Is He.” Later, she brings the group’s “Blood Medley” of traditional gospel songs to an end by singing so hard the audience seems suspended in breathless shock.

Four of Five Stars

Mp3 player recommendations: “Hold On (Change is Coming),” “Trouble In My Way,” “Runnin’ Back.”