Fire
Artist: Strive
Label: Independent Release (2008)
10 tracks / 35:54 minutes
 
Strive front man Derick Thompson has been faithfully pursuing his music-making craft for eight years now. He and his cohorts have released six studio and two live albums. Their group has been featured in CCM Magazine. They’ve toured extensively around their home state of Illinois as well as in Russia and Brazil. Their compositions have been licensed by everyone from MTV and E! Entertainment Television to Christian-based video game manufacturers. Yet, ask the average Christian music lover about Thompson’s band, and nine out of ten will probably return the inquiry with a blank stare.
 
For those seeking points of reference, tracks like “Just a Little More Time Now” and the similarly invigorating “Better Way” from the latest outing, Fire, find the Chicago-based trio drawing heavily from the barreling, arena-friendly anthems favored by U2 and Coldplay. On “Away From Here” and the title cut, they trade such stadium-ready leanings for an appealing appropriation of the laid back piano-based adult alternative pop purveyed by acts such as Ben Folds and the Fray. The most distinctive aspect of the group’s sound, though, is debatably Thompson’s sturdy singing voice, which draws from Bono, Josh Groban and Michael English in roughly equal measures.
 
Thompson’s vocals, like those of Groban, may strike the harder-rocking members of the listening audience as a bit operatic or over the top, particularly on the record’s slower songs where it is most noticeable. On the other side of the coin, those in the adult contemporary pack may be inclined, and perhaps rightly so, to label both the instrumental and lyrical portions of “Leave with Me” and “Away from Here” (A million miles/ Cannot even quench this fire/ That’s been consuming/ Since you first lit my desire) as more grandiose than grand. 
 
Whether such an assessment holds water or not, it does seem that the Strivers hit their collective stride when they rein themselves in a bit both musically and wordwise, as they do on the absolutely superb “Smallest Things,” a shimmering pop piece whose lilting vocals and infectious melody arguably made its choice as first the radio single a veritable no-brainer. While the preponderance of meandering and undistinguished material such as “Silent Like a Secret” keeps the Fire album out of the must-have category, the latest outing from Thompson & Co. includes more wheat than chaff and should appeal to fans of the artists that the Strive cooperative seeks to emulate.
 
Bert Gangl, The Phantom Tollbooth (09.18.08)
 

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