John De Freitas releases LP

John De Freitas releases LP

CD BABY: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/johndefreitas

No matter what corner of the globe you call home or what the last eight months have looked like from where you sit from nine to five, we can all pretty much agree that 2018 hasn’t been the easiest of years for our world. There’s war and discord almost everywhere we look, with days of peace starting to seem like a distant memory that has little chance of every reoccurring again. It can be easy to get down about all of the negative stuff going on these days, but even on the darkest of nights, music always has a way of shining a light and cutting through the unknown fog to show us the path towards salvation. Gospel-influenced singer/songwriter John De Freitas knows just how powerful a tool music can be in times of immense chaos, and in his new album Walk in Love (also known as Qué Alegría Qué Gozo) he challenges us to kick our collective depression to the side in favor of embracing the rich joys of music and everything that it evokes within us.

John De Freitas is nothing if he isn’t one of the most elaborate composers in his medium, and he boasts a very ambitious repertoire on Walk in Love that would be enough to make a lot of listeners wonder if this really is his first record. The poised sway that kicks off the album in “Incomparable” isn’t the sort of thing we usually expect to hear out of a studio rookie, nor is the relaxed nature of “He Has Done it All For Us.” Walk in Love is a record that you’re expecting to devolve at some point into predictability, but we never get to that point. On the contrary, each twist and turn that the LP has to offer is more eclectically stylized than the one that came before it, ensuring that the audience will remained gripped to the speakers for the duration of its playing time. This is a record that can easily be listened to multiple times on repeat without feeling like the message or the music itself is repetitive or even slightly formulaic.

To be quite frank, I’ve never been much for gospel music or the majority of CCM that I’ve encountered in my professional life as a journalist or in my private life as a music fan, but this record transcends categorical placement all together. These songs, if you weren’t aware of their religious context, could sit comfortably on almost any album under the pop music umbrella, provided that they would still be performed by and produced under the close watchful eye of John De Freitas himself. With his level of skill, he has the power to captivate almost any audience within earshot of his magnificent voice, and I for one wouldn’t hesitate to check out any project that he chooses to tackle, whether it be faith-based or something more secular just the same. Walk in Love is a great window into the soulful stylings of one of pop music’s most curiously intriguing artists today.

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS9XWN-QALM

Mindy McCall