Lisa Page Brooks
Ready
Habakkuk Music (2013)
www.habakkukmusic.com
By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog
Believe the promotion and cyber chatter: Ready is one of gospel songstress Lisa Page Brooks’s best albums to date. The project’s dozen radio-size songs overflow with optimism, whether bouncy and bright or serious and hymnic.
An alumna of the female gospel group Witness and spouse of singer-songwriter-producer Michael Brooks (Commissioned), who wrote most of the album’s songs and co-produced with Justin Brooks, Lisa Page Brooks conveys joie de vivre as well as a veteran’s sense of timing in her singing. Time and again on Ready, she transitions seamlessly from jazzy pop to evangelical firebrand in the course of four-minutes.
The album’s current single, “God Thing,” is a breezy and rhythmic recommendation—with subtle nods to the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing”—to follow God’s direction, because it is the best way. “Love Somebody Else” is a lovely ballad with the equally lovely sentiment of paying love forward. The title track is a reworking of a Commissioned single that posits the standard caution to “get your house in order” and be ready when Jesus comes. “Better Than Life” is a feel-good inspirational song, which says that God’s love is better than life itself. It was a TBGB Pick of the Week last August.
Brooks’s traditional gospel roots show on tracks such as “Empower Me” and the prayerful “Heal the Land,” where she lets loose with unsubtle evangelistic fervor. She delivers the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” like a dyed-in-the-wool church soloist, accompanied (naturally) by a B3.
Lisa Page Brooks has thus far had a successful ride with April Washington-Essex’s Habakkuk Music imprint, one that has brought her hits such as “I Want to Say Thank You” and “God is Good.” Ready is the latest chapter in this winning streak.
Four of Five Stars
Picks: “Better Than Life,” “God Thing.”
Written by : Bob Marovich
Bob Marovich is a gospel music historian, author, and radio host. Founder of Journal of Gospel Music blog (formally The Black Gospel Blog) and producer of the Gospel Memories Radio Show.
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