Dave Bilbrough - Everybody Sing

Reviewed by Trevor Kirk

After his last release 'Personal Worship 2', which was very intimate and, yes, personal, Romford veteran Dave is back with a live and lively album of new material recorded at the Easter People gathering in Torquay in April 2002. Dave's been doing a fair bit of globetrotting lately, and some of the places he's been visiting have rubbed off on his music. So as well as the acoustic-driven pop praise that has been his usual style since he first came on the scene at the end of the 1970s, he's mixed in a bit of reggae, a splash of salsa, a dash of Celtic and even a smidgeon of South African township and East African call and response! Whilst all this world music eclecticism may sound like a recipe for an embarrassing cultural mish-mash, on the whole this works, mainly because Dave still knows how to write a good song that sets the feet tapping and the hands raising. It remains to be seen whether any of these songs reach the classic status of "Abba Father", "All Hail The Lamb" and "Let There Be Love", but the title track is a lively up tempo praiser, and "Minute By Minute" has such a wickedly infectious Latino beat, that anyone who doesn't feel led to get up and dance is probably dead from the waist down.