THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

The Youth For Christ Choir is certainly not the most traditionally beautiful gospel choir on record.  You won’t find the slick polish of Kirk Franklin’s groups, or even the tightness of the Edwin Hawkins singers.  There is a rough, almost dissonant quality to the YCC’s singing that lends the songs desperation and urgency.  It is this slight ugliness that makes ‘Like A Ship’ much more moving than the euphoric ‘Oh Happy Day’.  Later in ‘Nobody Knows’, when Barrett sings his psalmic “I’ve been abused, and I’ve been scorned,” it is the desperation in the choir behind him that brings his point home.

Hornsby/Barrett, 2016