Artist Info:Discography Album length: 12 tracks: 43 minutes, 59 seconds Street Date: September 21, 1999
What do you do when you're soaring to the top of the charts, getting nominated for Grammys
and have an ever-growing fan base? You drastically change your style of course! But will this change be a good
one or a bad one? Let's see if Big Tent Revival has made the right choices...
In 1998, the band released Amplifier, the follow-up to their Grammy-nominated and
their best record to date, Open All Nite. Amplifier strayed away from their
pop-driven blues rock and was more electric, which showed most in the bonus tracks at the end.
It wasn't completely well-received which probably lead to their departure from Forefront Records.
But in 1999, the band has come back with Choose Life, soley released on Ardent Records for the first
time (when they were on both Ardent and Forefront from the beginning). Choose Life
unfortunately adds insult to injury as they wiggle towards more of a straight-up pop-soaked
rock sound. It's clearly evident when they rip off popular secular songs with the opening cut
"Livin' Off Your Love." It begins with a catchy electronic drum beat (odd for BTR) and then
trips and falls into a copy of that famous Third Eye Blind song (and didn't Sonicflood already
do that with "I Want to Know You"?) as well as another one that I don't know the name
or performer of. It's not a bad song, in fact it's pretty good, but it loses it's possible goodness
when you know it's a rip off and you hear how drastically different it is from their previous efforts.
"Choose Life" follows, a traditional BTR ballad tainted by an untraditional drum beat, bland lyrics
and melody. "Fill Me With Your Spirit" is pleasingly more along the lines of something that would be heard on Open
All Nite, but it doesn't fit on the album with the 2 musical flops prior to it and the others scattered
following it. "Love Me Like You Do" sounds promising like "Fill Me..." as it starts out with their
trademark organ, but then introduces an upbeat bass beat and then a rip off of The Wallflowers' "One Headlight."
"This Is the Word of God" cornily disguises itself as a poppy Top 20 N*Sync love song while being
about the Bible. "Now Is the Right Time" is more along the lines of something from Amplifier,
but suffers from painfully poor lyrics. "Will You Be Mine" is a good Valentines Day song, a BTR tune
not too drastically altered. "Live For You" is a suprisingly pretty hard song for BTR, and they pull it off
nicely, actually, becoming one of the only album highlights. "Please Forgive Them" suffers the same
verdict as "Now is the Right Time," while "One More Song," and "I Worship You" have a more familiar
sound, but don't have enough to stand out from the others and suffer from the last-half of the track list's
downfall. The CD closes with "That's What I Want for Christmas," a fun, yet kind of corny, Christmas song, but feels lost
and "tacked on" to the end of the CD. (Should have buried it at the end as a hidden track if you really wanted
it on there, guys.)
Certainly not a bad CD, but most definitely not their best. Choose Life isn't a Big Tent record I'd really recommend.
- Review date: 5/8/00, written by John DiBiase
Artist Info:Discography Record Label:Ardent Records Album length: 12 tracks, 43 minutes and 59 seconds
Street Date: September 21, 1999
Buy It:Amazon.com
Artist Info: 
