Charlie Peacock has just released his latest album, "Love Life" on Sparrow records and it is absolutely compelling. I was very surprised with the musical content the first few times I listened to it, but after a while it grew on me. Now I can't keep the songs out of my head. Charlie's previous slightly alternative days are over, making room for a more live and colorful sounding pop-art-jazz-prayer-dance style that is backed by his ever so soft yet powerful vocal strength. The album is unique only to Peacock yet it is well rounded with a broad range of musical qualities. The first two songs, "After Loving You" and "What's it Like in Your World?", open the disc on a very upbeat and dance-pop mood which is followed by a few touching piano backed love songs, some Latin American style jazz, and some core Peacock originality that makes him so talented.
Musically the album is A+ material and the lyrical content is right behind it with the same force. The most impressive cut on the album is a summer, feel good pop sounding song called "In The Light". It's chorus is, "I wanna be in the light as you are in the light, I wanna shine like the stars in the heavens, Lord be my light and be my salvation, All I want is to be in the light of love".
The rest of the album falls under a theme stated in the title "Love Life". The album is a modern day devotional on Song of Solomon with the titles, "After Loving You", "Another Woman in Tears", "There Was Love", "When I Stand With You" and, my favorite, "Kiss Me Like a Woman". "Kiss Me Like a Woman" probably has the most interesting chorus of any "contemporary Christian" song I've heard: "Kiss me like a woman baby, And I'll love you, love you like a man, Love is the language, we were made to understand", followed by the opening lines of the second verse, "We can lay naked and unashamed, Made one by divine connection..."
In context this album is a handbook on how men are expected to treat their wives and women in general—with respect and unselfish love. In Peacock's words, "The lyrical goal of the Love Life concept is to explore in ten songs the horizontal love relationship between men and women, and the vertical love relationship between God and mankind".
Something abstract from the norm but well worth it, "Love Life" is bound to be a chart-breaking album.
In closing here's a statement from A.W. Tozer that puts this album as well as our daily lives in perspective, "It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can after do no common act". God Bless.
Similar sounding releases
1994Brian GoodellSimple Love
1993Margaret BeckerSoul
1994Maia AmadaFaith Remains
1994Kim BoyceBy Faith
1996Billy and Sarah GainesCome On Back
1995AnointedThe Call
