Presenting: A Child Is Born. New Christmas Album From Sojourn.

My ALL TIME favorite Christmas albums and the one that gets the most plays at the holidays is "Advent Songs" from Sojourn. It is absolutely amazing! So I was incredibly excited when I heard that they were working on a new Christmas album. You can read Sojourns announcement below. 

We are excited to announce our newest album, "A Child Is Born". The album will release globally on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011. You can pre-order the album here and it will ship to your doorstep the moment it is released.

We’ve sought for many years to capture that emotion in our Christmas music. There’s a place for joy, a necessary and central place for celebration, but that joy and celebration has it’s most weight when seen in the context of the suffering and longing from which it emerges. So Christmas music at Sojourn has always had a dark edge, a sense of tension and angst, which points us to the darkness of our own hearts that longs for the light of Christ.

This new record is birthed almost directly out of our Christmas worship services. We recorded this one at home, so to speak, at the 930 Arts Center (our Midtown campus) and at Eddy Morris’s, our Production Director, studio (Ear Candy studios, where we also recorded Before the Throne and These Things I Remember). It’s an indie rock record, recorded the indie rock way, piecing together what we could to give you this homemade gift. It’s not perfect, but most home-made things aren’t.

We’ve also reached out to some friends and borrowed their songs. We’re happy to have Bifrost Arts’ “Joy Joy” on this album, a song based on a very old melody that perfectly captures that tense, advent joy. We’ve also recorded Bill Mallonee’s “Knocking at Your Door”, a song we sing every Advent season whose gritty and earthy words bring the season home. Sandra McCracken’s “This is the Christ” is a text she reworked from Martin Luther, and it was an instant favorite for us last year.

In addition, we have a number of originals and traditionals, including a punk-rock inspired “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, the grittiest version of “Go Tell it On the Mountain” you’ll ever hear, ambient pop versions of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Silent Night”, a John Newton text reworked by Brooks Ritter (“Oh Glorious Hour”) and an ancient anonymous text reworked by Jamie Barnes (“A Voice is Sounding”).

We currently anticipate to release the album globally on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011. Pre-orders are available here.