Great Comfort Records is teaming up with Bifrost Arts to do their part in reviving gospel pop music. In their own words:

For more than 30 years, pop music has suffered from a God complex—attaching a scarlet letter to artists who include the religious experience in their songs.

But a new generation of musicians from across the spiritual spectrum is emerging, discarding the trappings of the Christian-culture industry to reintroduce the transcendence, beauty and historical gravity of western [sacred] music to the places where it belongs: dinner parties, road trips and back porches.

Come O Spirit brings together artists like Dave Bazan, Damien Jurado, Rosie Thomas, Denison Witmer, The Welcome Wagon (featuring Sufjan Stevens) and Leigh Nash to revive 400 years of long-forgotten melodies and liturgical music. The brainchild of producers Isaac Wardell and Mason Neely, Come O Spirit interprets hymnody through lush, cinematic arrangements and a drop of Southern gothic mystique. It’s like a prayer.

Hopefully a few brief editorial remarks will not come off as untoward: first, it seems that openly Christian bands only really suffer when the music suffers (let’s pick some low-hanging fruit: Stryper, anyone?).

But much more: can we all please quit bemoaning the fact that there is profit to be made in the manufacture of music? Of any genre of music? We’ve been complaining about that for more than 30 years as well, and the output just keeps getting better.

Click on the first link above to download the title track to Come O Spirit by Aimee Wilson, and “I Sought the Lord,” by Leigh Nash and Megan Roderick. Click on the second link to stream tracks from the Christmas album, Salvation is Created: “Bring a Torch, Isabella” by Ben+Vesper, and “Joy Joy!!!” by Devon Sproule And Paul Curreri.

(By the way “Joy Joy!!!” is absolutely beautiful.)