Chances are that you know the Carlos Whittaker story. You know about his time at Andy Stanley’s North Point community church, about that tattoo, that viral video and the People’s Choice Award. You know all about that blog which comes in just behind Piper and Driscoll in the top five charts and you’ll know about the debut album with Integrity Music. We’re guessing you’ll also know about the fact that for Carlos Whittaker, the prospect of a world without social media is, frankly, terrifying.

But that is neither the whole story or the bigger picture. And when it comes to the words and sounds of Carlos Whittaker, the whole story and bigger picture matter a lot.

In a journey that has taken him from the east coast to the deep south, Carlos has become something unique within the church. His favorite phrase is his calling card - to disturb and disrupt to see Christ’s face fresh again - and his voice sounds loud and clear.

“Perhaps my voice before was a little more cautious,” he explains. “But now that I’m not working in a church I can be more...” [pause] “...aggressive? I mean that I am better able to question the evangelical community. These days I can say the things that will get me into trouble and lose readers and commenters, but these are the things that matter - these are the things that are true.”

All of which is why we’re five paragraphs in to this micro-bio and we’re only just getting round to exploring the new music coming from Carlos Whittaker. So where to start? The debut album - Ragamuffin Soul - was produced and largely co-written with producer-of- the-moment Jason Ingram. There was a lot of ground to be covered - like finding a sound, a voice and honing a message. And it needed to happen fast.

The result was an album that Carlos poured his heart into and songs like God of Second Chances that have pierced people straight to the heart. Carlos watched that song as well as many others take off almost as virally as his online presence. It was a fantastic beginning to this journey.

But two years are a long time in the life of a social-mediarista like Carlos, and in between the then and the now he has joined the Paradigm Collective label family - home to the likes All The Bright Lights and The Royal Royal - a brother partnership featuring Nathan ‘Producer-Of-A-Moment-Coming-Very-Soon’ Finochio.

“Nathan and I became friends before we became music partners. My kids love him and he knows me as a father, as a husband and as a friend. He sees my successes and my failures. So when we work together he produces and crafts in a whole different way. He gets my heartbeat.”

That heartbeat has a fresh sound. In The Arms features no heavily-delayed guitar parts, but a double swiss of keys, loops and all the rest (although, to be fair, in a concession to bemused guitar players everywhere, Carlos has recorded acoustic versions of all the songs). Still, there’s a reason for the change:

“People see me as this creative guy, and I don’t want to give them cookie-cutter worship music out of Nashville.”

The lyrics are equally deliberate, equally disarming, equally raw:

I used to have panic attacks so strong that I was unable to stand up. So these songs come from a life that has had to practice total dependence on God. Maybe the brokenness levels are higher than in others, but I’m tired of the fear. I’m tired of getting emails every day from people saying ‘you said what I wanted to say’...”

So these songs have an agenda, like a sheepdog let loose in the field. What might seem like chaos and collision is something else entirely: a Spirit-scripted plan to drive us to the place where the fear loses its grip. That’s where they’ll leave us; right over there In The Arms of God.