Amy Grant (A&M)

Album of the week

This album, celebrating Grant's 25th year as a Christian recording artist, is a warm collection of 14 songs of resounding faith. Always more effective with the sacred than the profane, Grant is in splendid voice on these traditional hymns and four contemporary tunes, sounding intimate, passionate and inspired by a force higher than the front office of A&M Records. (Her father, Burton Grant, a retired physician, adds further inspiration, leading a prayer between two tracks.) As a gospel singer, Grant still doesn't rival Mahalia Jackson in soulfulness. But she generally seems in her element, backed by the guitar and resplendent voice of her husband, Vince Gill, who coproduced this disc. Her quiet, modulated versions of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and "How Great Thou Art" are indeed praiseworthy.

Bottom Line: A spiritual triumph