A Collision Or (3 + 4 = 7)

There’s no denying the intensity of faith — or the level of audacity — caught in the tracks of David Crowder Band’s A Collision (Or 3+4=7). The Waco, Texas-based worship leader and his combo upend praise music conventions with a joyful spirit, leaping between music genres while finding unity in the Word. A Collision is divided into four parts, moving from the rootsy fragment “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven (A Walk Down Stairs)” to the celebratory modern rock finale “You Are My Joy.” In between are stark, piano-centered testimonials (“Come and Listen”), sleek radio-ready tunes (“Wholly Yours”), fiddle-fueled bluegrass hoedowns (“I Saw the Light”) and churning electronica outbursts (“Do Not Move’). The crunchy blues-rock of “Be Lifted or Rise Up” finds balance with the hard-charging pop of “Foreverandever Etc.” Crowder’s protean vocals — heroic one moment, humble the next — bring continuity to the stylistic shifts. A Collision uses its dizzying variety of sounds to suggest spiritual surrender and transformation, anchoring its sheer creative vigor in a message of love and redemption.