Review

by Beau Neal

The album is too seamless and the music too grandiose...

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Jeremy Camp's 'Live and Unplugged' Album Plus DVD Combo Squeezes the Life Out of His Previous Recordings

Camp recorded and filmed the album in Franklin, Tenn. -- Media Collective, photo

With nine consecutive No. 1 radio singles, the ASCAP Songwriter of the year title (2006), and countless treasures in heaven, Jeremy Camp is not sneaking up on any Christian music listener.

Self-proclaimed "Happy Campers" (think Beatle-mania, only Christian) eagerly wait for and purchase every magazine, sticker and album displaying the singer's highlighted hair and soul patch.

Camp sold 1.7 million records before his 28th birthday.

So what is a 2005 Gospel Music Association Male Vocalist of the Year to do after all his amazing immediate success?

How about squeeze all the life he can out of his previous hits with a pseudo-intimate unplugged album.

"Jeremy Camp: Live and Unplugged" DVD/CD offers nothing that hasn't been played in regular rotation on every Christian radio station in the United States.

In fact, the album add little more then a plunking too-loud piano and a maudlin too-busy string section.

Camp's lyrics are beautiful. On "Walk by Faith" Camp sings, "I will walk by faith/ even when I cannot see/ Because this broken road/ prepares your will for me."

But whatever sincerity and heart Camp put into writing these beautiful lyrics is lost in his effortless delivery and the band's insincere, over-orchestrated performance.

The album is too seamless and the music too grandiose to even take on the unplugged cliché of being either honest or raw.

To include a DVD with an album is the newest trend in the music industry to dissuade fans from pirating music from the Internet. If this review hasn't dissuaded you from pirating the album, don't let the DVD included with the album convince you.

The DVD is overdone. Countless out-of-focus close-ups on burning candles surrounding the stage and a rapid succession of camera shots from various angles try to break up the monotony of Jeremy Camp camped out on a bar stool strumming his acoustic guitar.

Much like the album, the DVD is of little use to "Happy Campers" and no use to anyone else.

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