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Don't ever hear much about Vince Gill being a Christian musician, do we? Though the circumstances weren't a little scandalous, he did marry one of the biggest of CCM artists, so one hopes Gill believes as the gal he married, yes?

There may be no better way to assess Gill's ample talent than These Days, the unprecedentedly ambitious quadruple-disc collection of 43 new recordings he issued last fall (sorry about the tardiness, but this is one I had to buy). Breaking it into aurally digestible chunks, Gill divides this bundle into four separate albums emphasizing different aspects of his artistic breadth.

Whether in the rockin' milieu of "Workin' On a Bill Chill," the varied definitions of "groovy" running throughout "The Reason Why," "Some Things Never Get Old"'s country & western purity, or the the acoustic explorations Gill assays on "Little Brother," Gill packs a project this massive with enough variety to make it engaging throughout. He also enlists copious guest duet partners and background singers to bask in the glow of all this superior songcraft.

Considering his matrimony, however, one hopes some of his randier songs (Gill at least co-wrote everything here) is born of the "Saturday night/Sunday morning" conflict of flesh and spirit that informs so much enduring country music. No decoder rings needed to decipher the inuendos of his partnering with Gretchen Wilson on "Cowboy Up" and "Molly Brown"'s folk/trip-hop. That said, he knows how to pull heartstrings with melancholy (the Alison Krauss-abetted "The Reason Why," clever bluegrasser "Cold Gray Light of Gone) and sincere romantic commitment ("A River Like You," "The Rock of Your Love" with Bonnie Raitt).

And yes, Gill sings and writes sacred work of the same quality that marked his mid-'90s hit "Go Rest High On That Mountain." Strangely, the least of the few gospel pieces here is his pairing with CCM-singing wife, Amy Grant. "Tell Me One More Time About Jesus" pales compared to the fiesty bluegrass in "All Prayed Up," the pensive reflections in "These Days," and even his less Christian-specific Sheryl Crow collaboration, "What You Give Away."

If any of the four collections brings down the whole slightly, it's Big Chill, where the idea of rockin' sometimes sounds like a Nashville transplantation of a Toto studio session of overly refined cool, right down to a vocal coupling with (the nonetheless wonderful) ex-Doobie Brother Michael McDonald. And though Gill qualifies as a soulful singer, his is a soulfulness of piqued subtlety that doesn't seek to burn the house down so much as set it to smouldering into one gigantic ash.

One may wish for Gill to express his Christianity more potently, but as a statement of a versatile artist whose reach doesn't exceed his grasp, he can be counted successful these days.

Jamie Lee Rake  February 25, 2007