Point of Grace‘s extraordinary 1998 release displayed the formula working at full strength. Tight harmonies, Bannister-ish orchestration, flawless execution from start to finish, this was an album of Big Songs. There’s not a lot of angst or soul-searching in this album. PoG would only rarely go in that direction. Instead the four women of that era’s PoG majored on encouraging Christian messages with which `positive radio’ makes hay.
The talent on display here is something close to matchless within its very narrow genre. One things of girl bands like, say, the Bangles, pauses, and decides that on pure musicality alone they’d not even play in the same league.
From the rythmic title track that opens this album through to the end, four women speak of faith in Jesus when things feel mostly fragile, mostly incomplete, but mostly on track. `Heaven or bust’ is not only a catchy set of lyrics but a programmatic definition of the PoG mentality.
Because it so often the girls’ harmony that receives mention, the observation must be made that these are four Big Voices, not a happy confluence of four weak ones. Each of the musicians is a capable soloist. Bannister has understood how to combine them with such fluidity that one hardly even wants to know the name of any single one of them. They are, indeed, Point of Grace, whatever each one is called by husband, daughter, or colleague in what we abbreviate as `real life.’
Christian believers will find here a CD to return to time after time for the purpose of elevating their spirit and strengthening their faith. Students of musical phenomena may look back to 1998 and write in the margins of their notebook that something remarkably like a point of reference happened that year via the crystallization of a sound called Point of Grace.
Canter Bridge 
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