The Keith Green Collection

This mid-career anthology of Keith Green recordings contains a trio of precious rarities: three in-concert performances undiluted by producer Bill Maxwell's excessive post-production. Green's best work is done alone with an acoustic piano. The majority of the record showcases Green's studio recordings, which are generally arranged with a pretty typical mix of classic rock guitar and adult contemporary strings. Green's straightforward religious songwriting and predictable rhymes would not be particularly notable were it not for the otherworldly passion of Green's piano and vocal performances. So when the production is stripped down to the source of the passion, the result is impressive: "Rusing Wind" is a dramatic prayer for interaction with the spiritual; "Scripture Song Medley" is a contagiously jubilant romp through a bunch of ordinarily unremarkable campfire tunes; "The Sheep and the Goats" is a one-man dramatization of a Biblical story, in which Green plays all the characters as he scores his own play on the piano (the mixture of melodrama with irreverent humor was typical of Green's unsettling sermons). These live tracks are connected to the studio tracks with impressive instrumental improvisations, and it's always disappointing when one of the live performances crossfades into an album version.