Album Review - Terry Scott Taylor - This Beautiful Mystery

How many times am I going to write about Tim Chandler?  Apparently at least once more!

Recently Tom Willet created and posted a video about Tim as part of a series of outstanding deceased Christian musicians that are horribly underappreciated, musicians that should have had an impact on the world at large but didn’t even make a huge splash in the CCM community.  The first two highlighted musicians were Mark Heard and Tom Howard, if that gives any indication.  While the video was good, it was the comments from his fellow musicians, people that lived and played with Tim, that really stirred my soul.

And this leads me to the reason for this article: the new Terry Scott Taylor album (or double album) This Beautiful Mystery.  I’ve been hesitant to vomit my thoughts out into the digital world because I’m not 1000% enamored with the new album, but that’s one of the things Tim liked about me, that I would tell him my thoughts on his music without a fanboy sugar coating.  If it’s amazing I’ll say so in the album reviews I used to write.  If a band turns in a stinker I’ll just not write a review.  This is why I’ve been hesitant to write this quasi-review, because everyone else online has been gushing about how glorious this album is, and I’m left scratching my head wondering if we’re listening to the same set of songs.

When I first heard This Beautiful Mystery I was struck with how few rockers there were, how the overall tone of the album teeters on maudlin.  Then I caught myself thinking “Tim would have probably done such and such on this track” or “Whoever is playing bass on this one isn’t really adding anything.”  Then I realized that such thinking is unfair.  Tim isn’t playing and whoever is shouldn’t try to be Tim.  It would be like an American trying to do a British accent.  They could get close but eventually they’d say “apartment” instead of “flat” or some such and the whole farce would fall down. 

Terry has said that Tim “gave me courage to venture beyond my supposed creative limitations and in so doing, lose my self-conscious restraints and give into a kind of wild abandonment.”  That is the missing element on This Beautiful Mystery.  If Tim had been alive he would have most certainly contributed on most, if not every, track on the new Taylor album and likely would have helped shape the songs, pushing Terry to swing for the fences.  As they stand almost all of them play it safe and despite Rob Watson gussying them up with his keyboard orchestrations (that unfortunately often sound a bit dated sonically) the songs fail to excite my aural neurons.

I listened to both discs a number of times and felt underwhelmed. I’m no enemy of slow songs but there were just too many of them.  Eventually I remembered that, like turning DOWN the bass will actually boost the guitar, often times removing a weak song from an album will increase the overall listening experience.  What if I removed the weaker songs and created my own “This Beautiful Mystery” of only those songs that appealed to me?  I printed off a list of the song titles and listened again, rating each song on a 1 to 10 scale.  Then, being the dork that I am, I listened to a few tracks at random and rated them again, not looking at my original score.  Seeing that the ratings matched I decided that it wasn’t necessary to endure the entire double album again.

Out of 21 tracks there were just eight that I rated a 5 or above.  I listened to these by themselves and found that instead of a ho-hum slogging through I have excitement now when listening to the album.    It’s just about on the level of “John Wayne” and “Knowledge and Innocence.”  If a strong handed producer had been brought in I’m sure some of the “cut” thirteen tracks could have been tightened up to make a full album.  I’m sorry if this sounds harsh (especially to Terry should he ever find himself reading this) but I have to call it like I hear it.  This Beautiful Mystery is a great album hidden inside a mediocre one.

In case you were wondering, the eight songs on “my” version are:

Signs and Wonders (this one has the most Tim-like bass part)

The Meek

The Everlasting Man

The High Tech Tribulation Force

The Very One I Love

A Great Good Is Coming

Worried Waters

Under The Mercy