::ALBUM REVIEW::

With a flood of projects hitting the shelves in the mid ‘90s, the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship Mass Choir introduced a movement that symbolically brought the best of gospel music to the church experience. With Bishop Paul Morton leading the newly-formed Baptist organization, the annual assembled choir - led by A. Jeffery LaValley and Byron Cage - turned out a number of best-selling albums including A New Thing and Bow Down and Worship Him. What surprised many inside and outside the organization is how Morton pulled some of the greatest songwriters and singers like BeBe Winans, the Williams Brothers, Kirk Franklin and Ann Nesby into the recordings. Strong material with big names gave Morton a solid advantage with his core fan base and his toughest skeptics. That prominence began to shrink by 2000 as new shifts and ideas were incorporated. Since then, the church fellowship’s recordings, except for the Sanchez Harley-supported Daughters of the Promise project released in 2002, have placed more emphasis on praise-and-worship. And even with the recent saga of Morton’s beloved Greater St. Stephens suffering from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina and a church fire in 2007, Bishop Paul S. Morton still remains busy with putting out solo projects and recordings from the Full Gospel music ministries. On Cry Your Last Tear, the Bishop once again “introduces” his choir during their 2008 convention in Birmingham, Alabama and whips out a lengthy nineteen-track offering filled with ministerial moments, interludes, spoken word introductions and big doses of slow-paced worship music.

The biggest star of the project is the VaShawn Mitchell-penned title track; packed with emotional lyrics and Morton’s dramatic crooning. Call it a revisit to what works: Morton knows about tears after he hit it big with the heartfelt radio hit “Your Tears” in the early-90s. While “Cry Your Last Tear” doesn’t pack the big punch anticipated, the soulful ballad still grants a great message, breathless harmonies and a sweet reprise of Marvin Winans’ “Ain’t No Need to Worry” on the song’s end. Deon Kipping’s “I Am What You See” works with its in-depth prophetic lyrics and milky melody. Successfully helping the song’s intimate pop tone is the inundant string arrangements and the skillful piano executions from the band. Not much gospel to expose except for the midtempo churchy workout found on “Wonderful God.” With its breezy keyboard sounds and Qualesia Coleman’s gritty ad-libs, the song is a refreshing journey through the old regime of Full Gospel recordings. But there is a highly repetitive nature found within the lyrics and the enclosing rock-infused reprise stiffens the song’s replay value. The syrupy adult-contemporary flavor of “In Pursuit of Your Glory,” “More of Thee” and “I Do Believe” are safe ballads that leaves the choir hanging dry with mere unison parts and occasional harmonies that sound too patched up with studio overdubs. Then the four-part Glory Medley - stretching across ten minutes of slow originals and Steven Fry’s popular “Oh the Glory of Your Presence” - revisits the rich successful formula used on Bow Down and Worship Him. As expected, Morton’s presence seals the deal with a climaxing solo on “Oh the Glory” and merges his Baptist roots with sweet worship as he did on “Let It Rain.” This time, it doesn’t seem over theatrical and excessive; timed to a perfect four minutes. When the album finally bows out with “Get the Glory,” the choir finally lands on a fast-paced harmony-sparked jam that may needed to have been presented earlier. After minutes of anguishing slow track after another, it’s probably too late to get funky.

There’s mot much to really like about this project, especially if you have a great memory of the two Full Gospel projects of the late ‘90s. Under new direction, William Murphy’s abrupt musical shift from fun, churchy gospel to forgettable worship ditties are all but amusing to the ears of most listeners. Engulfed with loads of lengthy seven-minute ballads and not enough meaty selections, Cry Your Last Tear doesn’t even try to put enough gospel into the mix as the tepid worship drowns out what is good. The spoken-word segments from Full Gospel’s biggest preachers aren’t even effective since it is quite apparent that they are only studio recreations superimposed into the songs as if they actually took place during the recording. It’s not always a bad thing to bring in new blood to revive the presence of freshness for future projects, but it may be best for the group to go back to the drawing board. With newbies Elvin Ross and L. Trenton Phillips along with crowned music director William Murphy III veering away from the sound that gave them their bold identity, it might be best to bring back what worked.