Jeremy Camp

Jeremy Camp Live, Jeremy Camp’s third live album (following 2005’s Live Unplugged and 2007’s iTunes exclusive Live Sessions EP,) gives fans a glimpse into his latest string of concerts, covering songs from his entire discography.

The album opens with the sounds of a cheering crowd, full of energy as they anticipate what’s coming next.  The first bars of “Capture Me” finally make their way through the cheers, and with an epic piano-driven opening that’s allowed to ring out, it’s a high-impact start for the album.  It blends into “Give You Glory,” which manages to hold on to most of the energy from the opener.

But when the band breaks into “Tonight,” despite the driven and intense music, there seems to be a little something missing.  Camp struggles to hit a few notes, but recovers after finally engaging with the cheering crowd.  He brings out his gorgeous falsetto towards the end of the song, and we finally see hints of the Jeremy Camp we were privileged to see in his Stay era.

But from there, the album slowly begins losing steam.  “This Man” and “Walk By Faith” are musically muddied, and while Camp certainly is passionate in his drive to share his heart and God’s heart with his listeners, the passion doesn’t seem to make it to his voice.  He seems to be just hitting notes rather than belting it out with abandon, and with the intensity of the accompaniment, it drags the songs down.

But with his heart on his sleeve, Camp takes a few minutes in the middle of the album to directly address the crowd, encouraging them to live out their faith and not shy away from it.  Whether or not it slows the momentum of the album is up for debate, but the break actually serves this album’s version of “Speaking Louder Than Before” quite well, giving more insight into his invitation to “speak louder than before” about our faith.  Musically, the song is fairly straightforward, nearly beat for beat like the studio version, although occasionally the song tempo seems to be getting away from Camp.  That track leads into “There Will Be a Day,” a track from his Speaking Louder Than Before studio album.  This is a song that was practically begging for a live version from the first listen.  With a soft opening that allows Camp to display a sweet vulnerability in his voice, the song takes off after that, complete with a choir backing.  This is by far the better version of this song!

A bit later in the album, he heads into “Take My Life,” but it’s one of the album’s biggest disappointments.  The opening is nearly unrecognizable, and it just feels like a bland retreading of one of his strongest songs.

The album finishes with “Give Me Jesus,” a song that would fit perfectly into a worship service.  It brings the album to a gentle close, bringing the audience down from a mostly high-energy set.

Overall, this live album isn’t too bad.  It tries to straddle the line between a concert and a church service with fairly decent results. It most likely won’t win any new fans for Jeremy Camp, but for his die-hard fans, this album will certainly find a home in their album collections.

Tagged as: Jeremy Camp

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