There are at least two problems someone encounters when they try to write about John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. The first is that so much has already been written on it, everything from a brilliant making-of book by Ashley Kahn to academic articles comparing it to speaking in tongues. Before putting pen to paper—or rather, text to screen—one needs to ask if there’s anything more to be said.

The second problem is a question of text vs. subtext. When writing about certain pieces of art or culture, it can be easy to get bogged down in behind-the-scenes gossip, to talk more about the story behind something than the thing itself. For an example, look up reviews of the film Ishtar written at the time of its release, and notice how many talk about how much it cost, and how its out-of-control budget contributes to it being a bad movie. (Ishtar is a terrific movie, by the way. Don’t listen to the critics. But I digress.)

When it comes to A Love Supreme, the text and subtext aren’t so easy to separate. Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue can easily be discussed on the grounds of pure music—it’s gorgeous music that swings, and it’s a joy to listen to. But it’s hard to do the same with A Love Supreme, in part because Coltrane didn’t seem to want to leave space for such a dialogue. For the first and only time, he wrote the liner notes himself—a letter addressed to the listener, and a psalm addressed to the Divine—and he chanted the theme of the suite, also the title of the album, in the opening track. Clearly, for him, the subtext was inseparable from the text.

The result is one of jazz history's most heralded, acclaimed, influential, and best-selling recordings. At a time when so many are cynical of religion and religious expression, here is a recording that oozes sincerity, that wears its heart and soul on its sleeve. It both epitomises and transcends a certain type of music, and it exudes the sort of genuine expression that can’t be faked. It’s psalm and proverb, sermon and prayer.

At its most basic level, A Love Supreme is music—a record of a specific date and time when a group of musicians gathered in a studio—and on that level, it succeeds brilliantly. Coltrane had already asserted himself as one of the great improvisers, and here he was at the peak of his powers. He had been going more and more toward a version of free jazz, but his work here manages to be both edgy and melodic, prickly and full of warmth. The rhythm section of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones meets him at every turn, playing with both sensitivity and ferocity in a way that is truly awe-inspiring. In terms of recorded sound, it deserves to be ranked as one of the all-time best. It’s a classic for a reason.

My only complaint with the sound is the mix. I’m not sure if it was the decision of Coltrane or his engineer, the legendary Rudy Van Gelder—I suspect Coltrane, simply because very few of Van Gelder’s other projects sound like this—but the saxophone is mixed hard to the left channel throughout, with the other instruments mostly occupying the right channel. The sound isn’t unbalanced, exactly, but it is a striking use of stereo separation, especially when listened to with headphones. I can’t help but wonder if the album wound sound slightly better with a more blended mix, something closer to mono. But this is a small issue.

Where A Love Supreme crosses from the classic into the sublime is in the subtext. To realise the spiritual roots of what Coltrane and his collaborators are doing, to engage with them on their terms, is an experience like none other.  For religiously minded artists—particularly those, like myself, who are sincere in our beliefs but actively avoid labels like ‘Christian music’—it’s difficult to know how much of our faith to put into our work. It’s all too easy to leave it on the sidelines or pull a kind of bait-and-switch with the listener. I’ve tended to put my faith front and centre, to unapologetically write from my own experience and convictions, and Coltrane is an artist whose work has inspired me to do so. Jazz and faith may seem to be odd bedfellows, and they certainly did at the time as well, but what Coltrane did with A Love Supreme proves that they don’t need to be. And the same is true for other artistic expressions that don’t neatly fit into the boxes of Sunday services, corporate worship, or Christian radio. Art, music, faith, hope… and the greatest of these is love. To quote Coltrane, it is so beautiful.