The Sweet Comfort Band returns!

The funk and jazz are still there, now with almost three decades of maturing as artists thrown in as well. Worth the wait… It seems like several bands and artists from the golden age of ‘Jesus Music’ have been jumping on the kick-starter bandwagon and picking up where they left off – some more successfully than others.

On The Waiting is Over, their first project since 1984′s Perfect Timing, The Sweet Comfort Band doesn’t pick up from where they left off – instead, as The Beatles might say, they got back to where they once belonged. Where Perfect Timing had a big, pre-prog arena sound (thanks in part to the fine production work of Dino Elefante), The Waiting is Over has a more pure band sound that highlights the interplay of the musicians, the excellent songwriting, and the exquisite vocals. Horns and strings? Sure – they’re around where needed (and are wonderfully arranged by Bob Barrett), but the band is never up-staged.

The album opens with the up-tempo, solid groove of “Lay It All On the Line,” featuring Bryan Duncan sounding as if the band never closed up shop, Randy Thomas delivering the most fiery (and the sweetest) guitar lines of his career, Rick Thomson as rock-steady as ever on drums, and Elijah Thomson (son of the late Kevin Thomson, the band’s original bassist) playing some of the most engaging, melodic bass I’ve heard onany recording this year.

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