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Jeff Silverman's album Cleansed has some strengths and some weaknesses.

The strengths are largely in the music.  The songs are in the folk/rock vein with some strong 60s and 70s influences, especially in the guitar work of the title song and in "You're Still Here." The use of organ, strings, flute, and electric and acoustic pianos in some of these songs recall songs you can hear on a good oldies radio station.  There are some really fine backing vocals.

The album's production is good enough that everything can be heard easily. The vocals are mixed out in front of the instruments. The music is clean and clear. The words, however, are a bit muddy.

The song lyrics lack the clarity of Silverman's music. He regards this album as a testimony to God's work in his life, and he sings his songs with passion and conviction, but the songs are confessional in only the most general way. The listener gets only a very vague notion of how God has "cleansed" Jeff Silverman. Often words seem to be chosen because they fit in a rhyme scheme rather than because they convey a specific idea.  This gets in the way of the communication between the songwriter and the listener.

The lyrics rely heavily on quotations from and allusions to Scripture,  but a listener not already familiar with the sources of the quotations would find them obscure if not puzzling. "Song from the Deep" relies heavily on the book of Jonah, but not in an immediately obvious way. In addition, the songs are full of imagery (e.g. the concept of God's work as "cleansing") familiar to anyone who has been around Christianity. A listener not familiar with evangelical jargon, on the other hand, may not fully understand what Silverman means to convey in his songs.

The result is an album which can enourage listeners who are already Christians, but which does not connect with listeners who are not already believers.

Chris Parks  9/13/2001