Editorial Reviews

How the Years Go By is a Vitamin Records tribute to the music of Amy Grant. It features numerous vocalists -- all female but for one -- interpreting some of Grant's best-known songs. Whether it was gospel, contemporary Christian, or her latter-day emergence as an attractive, girl-next-door crossover act, Grant's songs were always rather fluffy and tame. This is why Vitamin's choice to subtitle its collection "an electro-acoustic tribute" is so daring. The arrangements included here are often more intriguing -- and entertaining -- than the source material. The original recording of "Nobody Home" is a contemporary Nashville affair with jangling guitars and a vague "My Hometown" feel. Here, Deena Noroian's vocal and the mild trip-hop groove give the song more of a resemblance to Morcheeba than Grant. The cloying synths that dominated "Baby Baby" -- Grant's biggest secular hit -- are replaced with gentle acoustic guitars and a diaphanous vocal that suggests Zero 7 or Air's Moon Safari without the burbling electronics. Even Grant's gospel classic "El Shaddai" is given new life on How the Years Go By. Michael Moore's vocals are appropriately reverent, but their processing and the new Middle-Eastern arrangement might be off-putting to fans of Grant's gospel material. Nevertheless, the producers of this tribute were not afraid to experiment. "Oh How the Years Go By" suggests Ray of Light-era Madonna, while their version of "Lucky One" removes the adult contemporary gloss of Grant's original in favor of deconstructed ambient pop that sounds like something from Aphex Twin's ambient period. Tribute to Amy Grant or not, no electro-acoustic collection would be complete without Everything but the Girl. How the Years Go By doesn't disappoint -- while its version of "Love Has a Hold on Me" is performed by Hailey Kyees, the beat is an unmistakable nod to Walking Wounded-era EBTG. It's questionable how any of this tribute will appeal to fans of Amy Grant, as her most famous songs have been so significantly reworked as to be completely different, losing whatever spark her audience may have enjoyed them for in the first place. And it's unclear why Vitamin chose the stylistic path it did for the collection, as Grant's crossover from CCM to secular pop did not include any forays into the electro-acoustic genre. Yet. Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide

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