Love & War & The Sea In Between

Not sure how I’ve managed to miss out on Josh Garrels until now, but I’ve finally discovered his music. He’s just issued his seventh album – Love & War & The Sea In Between – and it’s already one of my favourite albums of the year.

His music is a fusion of many, many styles and genres – folk with soul, acoustic hip-hop, even a little funk thrown in. His lyrics are complex and nuanced and inspired by his Christian faith. The stylistic variety of his instrumentation is amazing and the result is sublime – seriously, there are no words to describe it.

Josh spent more than a year on the album, and he called the process “the most rigorous mental and spiritual struggle I’ve known as an artist.” This is certainly reflected in the depth of his lyrics; one reviewer sums it up like this: “Lyrically, Love & War is prophetic, incisive, achingly human, and longingly spiritual.”

But you don’t have to take my word for all this it. Josh has decided to give away his new album online, hard copies at concerts, anywhere people want his album. Garrels said, “We’ve felt led to give the album away for one full year, so we’ll be giving away as many albums as we can.” Any proceeds donated for the album will go right back into producing even more albums to continue to give away. So what are you waiting for? You’ll be hard-pressed to hear anything finer this year. Do you agree? Let me know what you think!