Rend Collective's Campfire II: Simplicity - A Brief Review & Highlights Of The Album

I am a giant fan of Christian band Rend Collective.  When I first stumbled upon them late last year I really took a liking to the backwoods down-home feel of the songs from their albums Homemade Worship By Handmade People and The Art Of Celebration.  It wasn't much longer in my music searching journey before I discovered several songs off their live album Campfire, and it's safe to say those songs have become my favorites by the group.  You listen to the original versions of their songs from the first two albums (Alabaster, Second Chance, Movements) and while they're pretty decent in their own right, I find the acoustic arrangements on Campfire to be far superior in terms of sound quality and a little bit easier to listen to.

So naturally, when I found out in August that the group planned to release a second album of acoustic arrangements of their songs, I was overjoyed and really looking forward to what we might see on this new album.  The original release date was in November, so I knew we'd have a while, but when I saw the date had been moved up to October 7th (today), I was really happy, and the songs I downloaded from the album are what I'm listening to as I write this post.  At first listen, they all sound pretty interesting and reminiscent of something you'd hear at an actual campfire minus a couple instruments.

Overall though, I feel the album is lacking in a couple places, and that's due to one major overlying thing: The fact that Campfire started something new for the group musically, and that was having the acoustic sound on most of their songs on their last two albums.  Now I'd say that's probably been for the better, as both The Art Of Celebration and As Family We Go have wonderful songs on them that I absolutely love, but now listening to them on this album, you can't really notice a difference besides the fact that they either decided to use different instruments, had a quieter sound, or changed the backing track to what they used in their live concerts, which is an over the top percussion track and lots of little random sayings in between the verses and chorus from lead vocalist Chris Llewellyn, which kind of destroys the rhythm that made me fall in love with the song in the first place.

Despite that, the album still has it's highlights, and I have them below.  The first video is the original song, and the second video is the new version from Campfire II: Simplicity 

Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) - Original By Hillsong United

Simplicity

Joy Of The Lord

You Will Never Run

Of the three Campfire albums released so far, I'd say the original still takes the cake for me.  This one though draws a close second, and the Christmas album has it's perks to it as well.  I may review both of those at some point down the road....

Do you have a favorite song from the new album?  Sound off in the comments!