About this product

Product Identifiers

Record LabelCdb, CD Baby

UPC0888295048828

eBay Product ID (ePID)5046048695

Product Key Features

FormatCD

Release Year2014

GenreRock

ArtistMatt Hammon & Cameron

Release TitleHammon, Matt & Cameron : Songs of Heaven

Dimensions

Item Weight0.24 lb

Additional Product Features

Number of Tracks10

Number of Discs1

TracksJesus Is King, Can't Help Myself, All My Tears, The Solid Rock, Up to the Mountain, Christina, How Deep the Father's Love, Be Thou My Vision / Open My Eyes, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Fraction Anthem / Flags

NotesSongs Of Heaven is the second full-length studio album by Matt and Cameron Hammon (formerly known as 'Olivette'), out of Houston, Texas. This collection of songs has accompanied the duo around the world, conveying themes of second chances, reconciliation and relentless hope to people - much like themselves - who find themselves in great need of each. Enlisting the co-production savvy of Josh Moore (Caedmon's Call, Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, etc...) the duo spent a week recording live in a massive stone house in Cedar Hill, TX (an outpost of CCM wunderkinds Shane and Shane) with their tried-and-true band - Jay Snider on drums (who also mixed the majority of the album) and Brent Nettles on bass, giving the record an immediacy and intimacy often missed by over-production and over-thinking what should be very straight-to-the-heart American songwriter rock-n-roll. These 'songs of heaven' revealed themselves to the band in myriad divine ways, mostly during the Hammon's season of serving in Houston on the staff of Ecclesia, one of America's few outside-the-box large churches with a heavy emphasis on artfulness, lament and compassion - values which seep through every pore of this album. The breadth of songs and songwriters represented on 'Songs Of Heaven' is as sweeping as the North Texas prairie in which it was captured - contemporary church songs such as Josh Fox's 'Jesus Is King' and the Vineyard's 'Fraction Anthem - mashed-up with Brooke Fraser's 'Flags' - balance the reinterpreted hymns 'Solid Rock' and 'Be Thou My Vision' (which features an anthemic new section written by lead singer Cameron Hammon and co-producer Josh Moore). Fans of American roots music will savor the Julie Miller classic 'All My Tears' as well as the so-fragile-it-might-break-at-any-second version of Sandra McCracken's poetic reflection on Psalm 120 entitled 'Can't Help Myself', which easily serves as the overarching theme of the entire album; 'I lift my hands, empty hands. I can't help myself'. The centerpiece of the record, however, is the rousing original 'Christina', written as a plea for the life of a young orphan girl the Hammons met in Cahul, Moldova - the least developed country in Europe and a nation devastated by the global human trafficking crisis. The haunting bridge of the song is an incessant yearning of the Beatitudes - 'Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom; Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God' - as if Cameron is daring Christina's creator to make good on these ancient promises out of mercy for the helpless and the tens of millions of other 'Christinas' in the world. As a result of the Hammon's ongoing mission work in Eastern Europe the couple established a non-profit organization called Olivette Music and Missions (olivette.org) to serve as a platform from which to speak to the masses about the spiritual and human legacy of communism in a very important yet mysterious part of the world. Yes, there is often a language barrier, but there is never a communication barrier - not when songs of heaven are being sung.