AMG Review of Whispered and Shouted

Jared Johnson
All Music Guide

Whispered and Shouted is more of the same temperate worship lyrics and glitzy production from the Jakob Dylan sound-alike. Expectations were high even before Aaron Shust was named Songwriter of the Year at the GMA Awards. To a degree, this sophomore project met the hype by offering more simplistic worship odes like those on Anything Worth Saying. The instrumentation is more varied this time around, yet Shust's work shows a disappointing sameness and transparency that plague the disc throughout. Rather than taking you to new places (which he is clearly capable of doing), the journey remains stagnant. Had he focused on expanding his lyrical versatility versus experimenting with production, Shust had the potential to live up to the accolades that began stacking up possibly a little too early in his career.