Chris Rice

Item: The Living Room Sessions
Author: Heather E.

The Living Room Sessions

(2001)

Reviewed by Heather E.

Discogs Apple Music

Label Rocketown RecordsReAL Magazine2001

acoustic piano rock worship

The Living Room Sessions isn't perfect, and Chris Rice knows it. But that's kind of the point. In the liner notes for the recording, Rice writes, "I left a few notes in that don't quite belong, and you might hear the piano bench creak every now and then, but I decided to leave the humanness in, like I found it in my church growing up."

Human--and simple--are great words to describe The Living Room Sessions, which was recorded in Rice's living room. There are no swelling strings and no nature noises--just the piano. The arrangements themselves are simple, and leave any experienced pianist saying, "I could play that."

This simplicity is what makes this collection of twelve hymns so endearing. None of the songs will become your favorite because of some unique musical characteristic. Stylistically, each track has the same meditative, Sunday morning feel to it. Anything unnecessary is cut away and you hear the hymns: songs that you remember singing as a kid in church but have been pushed aside as praise songs have become more and more popular. The beauty of recording such classic hymns as 'Great is Thy Faithfulness' and 'Fairest Lord Jesus' as instrumentals is that the words are so clearly evoked.

By recording what Rice claims are some of his favorite hymns, he has recalled not just the words we sang as children in church, but words that are like stakes in the rich soil of Christian history. These hymns teach and guide us. As Rice writes in the liner notes, "I never realized that week after week I was repeating and rehearsing such great theology, and it never dawned on me that these hymns were at work in my heart, shaping how I now understand God."