Music Review: Brooke Fraser, Albertine

By Steve Morley

In the early 1970s, you could turn on American Top 40 radio and hear about Jesus. A few years later, an emerging stable of contemporary Christian artists began to relocate Christian-themed pop into a free-standing, non-secular genre, resulting in a sacred/secular divide that still stands tall. Those musical borders are more relaxed in countries like New Zealand and Australia, where singer Brooke Fraser is a bona fide pop star as well as a member of Hillsong United, for whom she’s written internationally known contemporary Christian worship songs. Fraser’s 2006 album Albertine was an across-the-board success in her homeland. After its 2008 U.S. release, the album showed up on the “best-of” lists of major Christian media. However, secular music publications—when they paid any mind to Fraser at all—largely dismissed the Kiwi singer for her resemblance to singer/songwriters like Sarah McLachlan, considered novel a decade ago. Her introspective style, however unoriginal, is a comfortable fit for Fraser’s thoughtful and passionate meditations. Though she might not be attracting many secular listeners, Fraser presents her faith in a manner that’s light on jargon and straightforward enough to pique the curiosity of the unconverted.

Tossing in tidbits of Scripture on “Hosea’s Wife,” Fraser extends a sweeping invitation to new life on the soaring choruses, while her verses take the view of the apologist, arguing logically for a spiritual dimension without relying on Christian catch phrases. (“Shed that shallow skin/ Come and live again/ Leave all you were before/ To believe is to begin/ There is truth in little corners of our lives/ There are hints of it in songs and children's eyes/ It's familiar, like an ancient lullaby/ What do I live for?”) Fraser makes an even stronger impact on the opening couplet of “C.S. Lewis Song,” which nimbly paraphrases the noted author named in its title. (“If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy/ I can only conclude that I was not made for here.”) 

Fraser’s cries to her Creator are so direct they can easily seem aimed at a human companion. On “The Thief,” only the title’s passing allusion to the second coming of Christ distracts from Fraser’s heart-stoppingly lovely expression of romantic surrender.  (“You sing me to sleep/ Talk down my walls/ Look through my windows as I wait/ You could be the thief/ I give the key to.”) The depth of longing heard on “Love, Where Is Your Fire,” though, is a tip-off that she’s seeking more than fleshly fulfillment. (“Imposters have been passing, offering good-feeling glow/ But I'm holding out for what you are about/ An inferno that burns to the bone”)

Even as she intensely presses into the ether of intimacy with God, Fraser rarely loses sight of the earthly realm. “Seeds” concerns itself with what we leave behind for generations yet to come, while the title track considers more immediate human needs. Fraser, while visiting Rwanda, met a girl named Albertine who was orphaned during the 1994 Rwandan massacre. On her ode to that experience, Fraser’s personal convictions about responding to a nation still in pain spill over into an implicit call to humanitarian action. (“Now that I have seen, I am responsible/ Faith without deeds is dead/ Now that I have held you in my own arms, I cannot let go till you are…”)

Fraser’s recent embrace by faith-based American listeners indicates that they’re famished for music that isn’t factory-baked. And indeed, on Albertine, the bread Fraser serves, if day-old by secular standards, is a hearty multi-grain that gives the spiritually inclined something both to chew on and to savor.

Audio Clips

"Love, Where is your Fire?"

"C.S. Lewis Song"

"Seeds"

"Hosea's Wife"