There’s a tendency in contemporary inspirational music to confuse volume with conviction. Bigger choruses, bigger productions, bigger declarations of faith. Somewhere along the line, subtlety became an endangered species. That’s one reason why Eddy Mann’s “I Will Never Know the Desert Again” stands out so effectively. It understands that the strongest messages often arrive in a whisper rather than a shout. The veteran singer-songwriter has spent years crafting music that exis

There’s a moment somewhere deep inside DPB’s Undefeated where you realize this album is not trying to be cool. Not once. Not for a single blessed second. And that’s exactly why it works. Because cool is dead. Cool got algorithm’d into dust years ago. Undefeated doesn’t care about playlists curated by emotionally unavailable interns in Los Angeles. This record is alive in a completely different way — loud, earnest, overstuffed, sincere to the point of near-collapse. It’s a gos