Even for a Godrocker, David Crowder is unvarnished. His guitar lives for blaring anthems–”Amazing Grace” is his idea of an encore number–and his electric-socket hairstyle makes Matisyahu look metrosexual.
By this measure, his latest album, “Remedy,” his first in two years, is surprisingly reflective. Fans of Crowder’s straightforward praise music won’t be disappointed. There’s plenty of unbridled adoration, full of repetitive choruses and hooks that allow the parishioners at his Baylor University-area home church to join in with a vengeance. And we’re never going to hear psychobabble from Crowder about childhood. But on the title track, and plinking keyboard-led numbers like “Never Let Go,” there’s an intimacy—a purity of voice and lack of overzealous instrumentation—that the chanting refrain doesn’t entirely chase. That’s welcome: four albums in, we’re ready to hear a little more directly from Crowder’s heart.

Some of the complexity is bought cheap. The album’s radio song, “Everything Glorious,” chirps and hisses with predictable and entirely unnecessary studio effects—a typically Christian tic that makes the song slow to get moving. Crowder’s power psalms raise the kind of goosebumps that threaten to tear your flesh off. The best thing a producer can do is get out of the way.