‘Cutting Edge’ by The Cutting Edge Band (Delirious?)

There are lots of albums that I’ve enjoyed over the years, and a good number that I’ve really loved. Few of them, however, had played a more important role than the Cutting Edge albums. Though it was released in 1993, I heard it for the first time a year or so later, just as I was starting to lead worship at my home church, and just as I was starting to get to grips with the guitar. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Cutting Edge band, and later Delirious (as they were to become) wrote some of the most influential Christian songs of the decade, but they also had a style and sound that I found hugely appealing.

Listening back to the first album (I say album, at six tracks long, it’s only really an EP), it’s remarkable how conventional it sounds. Three of the tracks (‘Lord You Have My Heart’, ‘Thank You For Saving Me’ and to a lesser extent, ‘The Crucible For Silver’ went on the be sung in churches across the land, and the first two of those tracks would fit comfortably into all but the most traditional of them. The arrangements to all the songs on the album are very straightforward – at this stage, there wasn’t much of a band really. Front-man and writer Martin Smith, drummer Stewart Smith, and keyboard player Tim Jupp were in place, but the band wouldn’t finally adopt it’s permanent line-up until Cutting Edge 4. As a result, there’s no heavily determined band sound, which is perhaps why the songs spread so far. ‘The Message of the Cross’ and ‘The Singer’s Song’ are less congregationally suitable, but are still very explicitly worship songs. Only ‘What Is This Thing Called Love’ is a sign of how things would develop – less obvious, more performance oriented, and more rock-styled.