Music Reviews

heather van allen | music reviewer

KING SIZE MANGER josh turner

Get ready to celebrate a country Christmas with country recording artist Josh Turner this season. His 11-track King Size Manger, released October 8, 2021, will have you dreaming of gathering around the fireplace with family and friends, singing songs and sipping hot cocoa while soft snow falls outside.

Inspired by Josh’s childhood memories of Randy Travis’ Christmas collections, King Size Manger combines country arrangements of several familiar classics of the season with four original tunes. Wrapped in the warm, feel-good comfort of Josh’s deep bass vocals and blue-grassy guitar is the deeper meaning in the story the album tells.

Expressing his fondness for the title track, Josh says “King Size Manger tells the story about how there had been so many prophecies of a Messiah coming and being born and so He fulfilled all the prophecies and then some. … It’s hope in a hopeless world that God would send His only Son for us to set an example and show us a new way. It’s about belief, it’s about grace, it’s about hope, it’s about love … and that to me is the reason for the season.”

COMFORT & JOY highlands worship

Highlands Worship, of Church of the Highlands, presents Comfort and Joy (released October 15, 2021), a contemporary offering for the Christmas season.

About the project created during the 2020 Christmas season at the multi-campus Church of the Highlands, Chris Griffin, who produced and arranged the album, says, “This was the best Christmas experience that I’ve ever been a part of. The team pulled off a technically intricate night that involved each of our church’s 23 campuses and an online experience, all emphasizing the Hope of the season alongside a nostalgic thread that connected well-known lyrics and melodies with contemporary production and music.”

Highlights of the 10-track album include the brief but beautiful instrumental title track, an innovative arrangement of “Carol of the Bells” and original praise track, “Greater.”

The remaining tracks are instrumentally refreshed renditions of classic carols, including “The First Noel,” “O Holy Night,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and more.