Style: Genre-blending worship, both meditative and epic; compare to David Crowder, mae, Nickel Creek
Top tracks: “This Is Not the End,” “Crags and Clay,” “Ezekiel”
Gungor’s follow-up to last year’s Beautiful Things finds the band pushing the boundaries of modern worship music in all the right ways. While loosely telling a creation/fall/redemption story with shifting metaphors and time signatures, Michael and Lisa Gungor flesh out these alternately joyful and solemn songs with fluttering woodwinds, mandolin and banjo freakouts, jazzy instrumental codas, rich orchestral arrangements, and heavy electro-synth that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Muse album. It’s diverse yet cohesive, the couple’s sincere, complementary voices acting as the album’s bonding agents. Ghosts Upon the Earth proves worship music can be experimental and still accessible.
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