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Illuminate by Daniel's Window is a new worship album that mixes some old favorites with new, original compositions. Covered here are "Open the Eyes of My Heart," "Your Everlasting Love," "Trading My Sorrows by Darrell Evans and "Every Move I Make" by David Ruis. Among the original songs, the best is "I Will Live for You" which was co-written by veteran producer Billy Smiley.

I must admit I am a bit confused by this album and others like it. While the songs are all praise and worship oriented, the music and production is decidedly pop-rock. There is nothing wrong with crossing genres, in fact this often results in some very good music. The problem here is that this album lacks the passion and heartfelt worship that is evident in, for example, Third Day's Offerings discs.

Listening to this album, I got the distinct impression that the band wanted to have fun and make music that is fun to listen to. In fact, in the insert we see the members of the band posing with goofy smiles and silly faces. Illuminate is, for the most part, fun to listen to, but I am left wondering why they chose to use these songs for such a project.

While I certainly do not mean to say that one cannot have fun while singing praise and worship songs, if having fun is the point of doing so or the only thing that one takes away from the experience I fear the point of the songs has been missed. I would feel equally awkward listening to psalms put to the music of The Backstreet Boys or *NSync. And the two members of the band who pepper a few of the tracks with some rap should probably be alerted that rap music has developed since the days of Run-DMC.

Darryl A. Armstrong 05/11/03