Shane & Shane - Hymns, Vol. 1 (2018)

Contemporary Christian music duo Shane & Shane are the combined forces of solo artists Shane Barnard and Shane Everett. A straightforward, testifying CCM act in the style of first-generation genre artists like Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith, their music is based on the duo's close harmonies and the largely acoustic soft rock and country-influenced stylings of Barnard's songs. Barnard and Everett met while attending Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Barnard, a native of Lubbock who had been leading student prayer groups since junior high, met Everett, a rock musician from the suburbs of Dallas, shortly after the latter underwent a Christian conversion and started attending Barnard's on-campus Christian fellowship group. At the time, Barnard was already beginning a musical career, having recorded a self-released 1997 album with another Texas A&M student, Caleb Carruth, called Salvation Still Remains. After that duo's amicable split, Barnard started a solo career that included Everett on harmony vocals. After a pair of putative solo albums under Barnard's name and another under Everett's, the duo officially renamed themselves Shane & Shane. After reissuing Psalms under the new group name in 2002, Shane & Shane followed with 2003's Carry Away, 2004's Upstairs, and 2005's Clean. After a live CD and DVD, An Evening with Shane and Shane, the duo took an extended break, returning in 2007 with Pages. In addition to their frequent touring, the duo kept up their prolific output, releasing four albums over the next five years, including a Christmas album called Glory in the Highest. Shane & Shane had a banner year in 2015, with the release of two high-charting new albums. Arriving in April of that year, The Worship Initiative featured a number of well-known worship songs culled from their ongoing series of the same name, while six months later, their tenth album, Psalms II, acted as a sequel to their debut and cracked Billboard's Top 200. ~ Stewart Mason