Music Spectrum

Being on a retreat in the Rocky Mountains finally gave me a chance to quiet my heart and listen to Army of Me’s Make Yourself Naked EP, a stripped back affair as if lead singer/guitarist Vince Scheuerman had gone solo or at least was writing and recording without the more rocking help of his bandmates. Scheuerman sounds, too, as if he wrote these songs from retreat, a quiet place, a time of introspection enforced by a lonely setting.

The ache present in the acoustic guitar strains and melody of “Lost at Sea” cuts me right to the quick. A prodigal son story of shoving off to sea without a map except for the heart’s impulse, the song leads right back to the dock—or at least the hope of returning. Scheuerman sings from the pig pen when all seems to be lost and he’s “looking for an open door at the end of the world.” Like the prodigal son who has all but given up and may just lay down to die among those pigs, Scheuerman says, “Why don’t you come and claim me/Before this ocean claims me first?” It perhaps works like a cry to God for rescue in Christ. Finally, we hear that Scheuerman will not give into being lost at sea forever because he has a hope (“The only thing that keeps me is the distant light of hope”).

Scheuerman talks about that hope as a woman, and in other places on the EP, he also could be talking about a woman. However, like the way the biblical book of Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman, there’s a way of hearing Army of Me’s EP as a personification of the hope in Christ. “Don’t Be Long” is then a cry for the salvation and hope in Jesus. It’s a thirst “for a drop on my tongue;” it’s a “melody ravenous and new.” It’s “an answer I’m waiting on;” it’s asking Jesus not to tarry, “don’t be long.” It’s the kind of song made for mountain retreats and for the still quiet moments of daily terror. Then that hope come with what’s needed for the soul:
In the desert of my heart
I asked my lady for a storm cloud pregnant with relief
She begins to rain on me.

Army of Me