Be Thou My Vision

Audrey Assad recorded “Be Thou My Vision” for 2016’s Inheritance, an album of traditional church hymns released on her own Fortunate Fall Records after a career that had moved steadily away from contemporary worship music’s hooks and choruses and toward something closer to plainchant. That shift is audible immediately: Assad’s arrangement is patient almost to the point of austerity, built on a slow, repeating piano figure that never resolves into anything louder than a modest swell, trusting the text to carry the song’s weight rather than building toward a release the hymn’s own words don’t ask for.

What distinguishes this reading from a merely tasteful one is how carefully Assad’s phrasing tracks the actual meaning of Eleanor Hull’s 1912 verse – “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise” lands with a specific, quiet conviction, not the generic warmth a less engaged vocalist might apply evenly across any hymn text. It’s the version of the three that sounds most like a person actually praying the words rather than performing them, which is exactly the frame Assad’s post-2016 catalog has consistently aimed for.

The production is the plainest of this week’s three recordings, and that’s a deliberate choice rather than a limitation – a hymn asking to be stripped of “all else” to the singer doesn’t especially want a wall of sound behind it.

8.4/10 – the week’s most understated reading, and the one that sounds most like it means every word.

Hero image: “Inheritance” album cover art, Fortunate Fall Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.