Turn My Face by Martyn Layzell

Reviewed by Tim Holden

'Turn My Face' is the worship pastor at St Aldates, Oxford's second album and is a well produced piece of pop rock mixing ballads and all out rockers that will not disappoint those looking for the Soul Survivor style. Most songs have a full band sound, though the arrangement and production of "If I Should Ever Falter" manages to show in one song how well the material translates from a single guitar to a full band. Martyn's songwriting continues to mature both in the straight congregational songs like "For Your Glory" and in the more performance orientated material like "Holding On". Catchy hooks and choruses abound everywhere but noticeably in "For Your Glory", a bouncy call to worship God based on Ecclesiastes 3 (a time for everything), and "Immortal, Invisible", a rewrite of the old Walter C Smith hymn. While there are too many songs that cry out for a congregation to be singing them for it to work as an album just to sit and listen to, it is certainly going to move people to worship and provide another set of songs for our churches to get to grips with.