Brooke Fraser – Albertine

It’s that time of the year when nearly every website, magazine, television show or semi-regular tent meeting comes up with a list to try to capture what just happened over the last twelve months. The music press seem to be the worst culprits with hundreds of media outlets expressing their opinion of what were the best releases of the year. To be fair, Burnside is no different, since we’ll have some sort of year end deal soon enough). There are so many polls and lists out there that there are sites just to catalog the lists, trying to come to some consensus on what the must-hear album of 2008 was (this year, it looks like Fleet Foxes will take the title, although there’s still hope for TV on the Radio to pull ahead, something I’m personally pulling for, as if it matters somehow). However, while the secular world wrestles over this collective arbitrary decision, two of the most prominent Christian music sites (Christian Music Today and CCM Magazine) agreed on a definitive winner: Brooke Fraser’s Albertine.

As Christian Music Today mentioned in their writeup of the album, the material on Albertine isn’t really new to 2008, since it was released to quite a bit of success in Australia and New Zealand in 2006, although for some reason, it took until this year for the disc to hit American stores. It’s not hard to see why the album has been successful…Fraser is an excellent singer (she’s also part of the incredibly popular Hillsong United group) and to her credit, the songwriting is of a higher quality and less deliberately obvious than one usually expects from Christian albums. Still, when I saw the album in the top spot on these charts, I had to go back and listen to the disc again (a few times, actually). I remembered Albertine as being good, but not terribly remarkable. While due to years of disappointment, I don’t necessarily expect my personal favorite albums to make the top spot, I was just surprised that these critics were so excited by an album I dismissed as not much more than better than average.

So, what did CCM and Christian Music Today like so much about Fraser’s album? CCM’s original review bordered on the ecstatic, signaling why the album was selected by the magazine later as the year’s best despite the album only receiving four out of five stars. Fraser’s “voice…is absolutely angelic. Her songwriting is unmatched. These songs ring true with poetic depth akin to the writings of C.S. Lewis.” With that much going for her, who wouldn’t be intrigued by Albertine? Christian Music Today seemed surprised a Christian album could be this good, saying “It’s particularly astounding that this artist has found success and worldwide acclaim when most of her songs are clearly derived from her Christian beliefs. But then it helps when the music is credible, honest, relevant sounding, and created with artistic excellence. Fraser is further proof that artists don’t need to water down the gospel to be heard in the mainstream, that smartly written Christian music can find an audience outside of the church, and that God can be glorified through music that isn’t specifically intended for worship.”

The strange thing is, through the lens of popular music in general, Albertine‘s better than average and a solid album overall by a talented artist, but it’s not really groundbreaking. Looking closely even at the reviews, you might notice a bit of problem. The original Christian Music Today review said that “if Lilith Fair were still around, she would be totally at home.” That remark is almost entirely correct, Albertine is like a lost Sarah McLachlan album or one of the other late 90′s artists to find mainstream popularity around that time who broke through with well sung, wistful and emotionally moving female singer-songwriter tunes. While those nostalgic for Tori Amos’ glory days will find a friend in Fraser, does this really make for the best album of 2008, nearly a decade after that sound was en vogue? As Paula Cole’s fame faded into the background, so did the days when this sort of thing was innovative, and while expecting a lot of innovation from Christian music might be a fool’s fantasy, there were certainly artists stretching the boundaries a lot more than Fraser did, including Anberlin’s major label debut New Surrender or the Myriad’s second album You Can’t Trust A Ladder. Admittedly, I’m generally more likely to take the alternative side over the adult contemporary arm of Christian music (although an argument could have been for Sandra McCracken’s album to take a run at the top spot as well), but even in the mainstream, it seems like the top spot of any poll should be occupied by a disc that’s reflecting something new and revelatory. When the best album is something pleasant, well-produced, well-written, but not entirely unlike a number of secular albums in style and quality (I was waiting for Fraser to start singing about “building a mystery” at some point), it seems like we might have set our standards a bit too low. Maybe next year.