Beauitful History:A Hits Collection 
Artist: Plumb
Label: Curb
    
Plumb is the CCM  crossover act the CCM industry hasn't yet fully appreciated. The singer who goes by the name of the band she once fronted has been integrating her Christianity into songs enjoyed by more than Christian radio's usual listenership for some years now.

But because she hasn't broken through at general market mainstream pop radio, it seems nobody among the industry serving her kin in Christ is talking about her. Beautiful History collects a dozen songs from as many years, proving that she may be ready for that kind of broader exposure,.

Since her emergence as a solo artist on a label recognized on both sides of the Christian market divide, she has scored on general market adult contemporary radio with a kind of alt rock for grown-ups who have moved on from college to domesticity. Her voice is at once light and somber enough to pull that off. That she has with conventional enough songs about unconventional topics might be how the Lord dwells in the details of her work. "Cut" may be the only song about physical self-harm John Tesh would play on his syndicated show. And "In My Arms" may not be the only one about a singer's infant offspring he would spin;however, it arguably best reflects the combination of darkness and protection articulated in classic lullabies such as "Rock A Bye Baby" by someone sounding like a goth girl who circumvented modeling on SuicideGirls.com for volunteering at church. 

Some re-recordings of songs from her days leading, not being, Plumb, demonstrate that motherhood and going past the big 3-0 have served her still-youthful voice well. An extended version of "Damaged," from the second of those group albums isn't listed as a 2010 re-creation, and the lyrics and liner notes are miniscule enough to dissuade one-me, anyway-from trying to discover that for sure. If you're clamoring for restylings from her/their first longplayer, you are, alas, left to online auctions and used record shops for the original article, as our gal doesn't oblige here (hey Essential Records, how about  reissuing those first two CDs?). Two new tracks, "Hang On" and the titular tune, deal with hope from less and more explicitly Christian viewpoints.

A second disc of dance remixes covers some of Plumb's most surprising venue of crossover success. Whether by her own design or by the urging of her record company (it's never made clear in anything I've read about her), she has scaled the upper reaches of Billboard's club and dance radio charts more than once. Radio edits and full-length mixes of 4 numbers give Plumb diva treatment around effective and engaging trance and house motifs and grooves. It's slightly bizarre to think that homosexual guys and other disco denizens are shaking their thangs to the singing of a woman so godly and seemingly normal. 

All those worldly accolades don't seem to have affected a lady who seems to be taken for granted among the audiences sharing the faith she articulates. Beautiful History serves as an introduction to some, and reminder to others, of an effective, if seemingly low key, witness in some surprising places.  

Jamie Lee Rake