Music Spectrum

Perry Farrell’s still singing about sex, so I suppose I should lay off the Jane’s Addiction Kool-Aid. Yet, the music itself remains so compelling that I’ve been letting The Great Escape Artist spin.

In the midst of singing about sex and debauchery of different forms, Farrell has always—in my mind—danced around the spiritual. Go back to Ritual de lo Habitual with “Three Days,” and you find a mash-up of a sex fantasy and the three days of Christ in the grave. The song goes in the complete wrong direction according to God’s ways, but the song also orchestrates hard rock in a way that points to something bigger than the amoral vision it paints.

Return now to 2011’s reformed Jane’s Addiction, and this time the brooding swagger of “Irresistible Force (Met the Immovable Object)” walks up to the spiritual. On the one hand, the song appears to be about the band’s success. They are the irresistible force. On the other hand, “God is a real man.” He’s the irresistible force, the immovable object. Jane’s Addiction may have achieved superstar status, but could it be that God is real, God is their “dad,” God is the One over all things? The song’s probably too coded to get to the real heart, but a spiritual inkling’s certainly showing.

“Broken People,” a laidback, spacey, late night track—with blasts of intensity—honestly looks at the reality of who we are as people. “Welcome to this world/Welcome to the aching world/A woeful world/Of broken people.” Here’s the admission of sin having its way with us. Here’s the admission of a need for this world to be repaired and restored. The song itself doesn’t offer much hope: “Help them out?/No, you can’t help them out/Not even you/They’ll break you in two.” Certainly that’s what happened to Jesus: they broke Him when He tried to help the broken people. Thankfully, He did rise again and does have the power and compassion to still help this woeful world.

Finally, for two other deeper explorations on The Great Escape Artist, turn to “End to the Lies” and “Curiosity Kills.” “End to the Lies” sounds like classic Jane’s with a little more effects throw in for good measure. The song could be the words of Truth speaking out in anger against all of the lies that go on in its name. “Curiosity Kills” works its muscles as it contemplates love, death, and meaning to this life.

Jane’s Addiction
Capitol Records

Everclear has redeemed some of their tracks by rerecording them, making their own versions for the 2011 release, Return to Santa Monica, while including some choice covers. However, it’s that idea of redemption that grabs me when it comes to Everclear. Things may be rough around the edges with Art Alexakis running around in his “big black boots,” singing about unemployment, drugs, dead ends, and break ups, but to me, there’s always been a note of redemption, a note of hope recurring in the music. Alexakis positions himself as the one who can lift others up out of their current predicament, writing songs or choosing songs that showcase a story of hope as someone discovers that love can get them beyond the breakers and the crowd.

Alexakis (the only founding member left) and the current Everclear lineup return to one such song of redemption, “I Will Buy You a New Life.” The speaker makes a promise to a woman to buy everything she needs for a new life—a garden, car, and a big house. The story in the song may not work out perfectly to see the speaker as a Jesus figure, but certainly, the promise of a new life works wonderfully as a metaphor for the spiritual redemption and renewal that Jesus brings.

I will buy you a garden, where your flowers can bloom
I will buy you a new car, perfect shiny and new
I will buy you that big house, way up in the west hills
I will buy you a new life
Yes I will

I hear those words as an echo of the messianic promise of God which gets repeated throughout the Old Testament and finds fulfillment in Jesus. For instance, listen to the echo in the words of God recorded in the book of Ezra:

Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem.

God’s people were slaves in exile in Babylon, and God had always promised that He would bring them back to the Promised Land, bring them back to their own land where they’d rebuild houses, rebuild the temple of God, and have a new life.

In many little ways, Alexakis and Everclear offer people that kind of hope in their music, the promise of new houses and new life and redemption. That redemptive impulse matches what we find in Christ only that rather than positioning ourselves as the messiah, we see that we Jesus to be the savior. He’s the One who will bring us to that new garden in the new life after death, living with Him forever.

Meanwhile, Everclear, let those redemptive chords play, crash against the dead ends around us, and point to hope beyond what we can see.

Everclear

Like Philpot, Lullwater riffs on classic rock, a muscly guitar/garage rock, even while hinting at the harder-edged side of R.E.M. Silhouette starts off in a 12 Stones-like hard rock on “Worse by Better.” Things pull back for the R.E.M. hints on the country-tinged “Amsterdam,” which also carries a Goo Goo Dolls feel. There’s a march quality to the drums on the shout of “A Forgotten Name.” “Alive” and “Let Me Out” rage and rock like songs destined to be used in hockey arenas to stir up the crowd. “Let Me Out” especially has that arena feel with its pogoing chorus.

“Whatever Happened” kicks up a bit of dust from the Gin Blossoms brand of countrified-rock. “Low” picks a fine guitar line to softly lead into the crash of a chorus. More acoustic twang rock closes out the album with “Faithful Sinners,” a song ripe for spiritual exploration and discussion with its chorus, “I’ve got my sins, I’ve got my demons, I’ve got my angels, I’ve got my faith…we will meet our fate.” For the most part, though, Silhouette is music made for the festival season, set to power up outdoor stages as the sun goes down.

Lullwater
Spectra Records

Article first published as Music Review: Lullwater – Silhouette on Blogcritics.

Three-Chord Lectionary is a series of posts that connect songs with readings from Scripture, seeing how music can send us to the music of the Bible.

In the midst of the testosterone-soaked Miss America, Saving Abel’s 2010 disc, there comes a faux-string drenched, Country-influenced, Hard Rock ballad which seems very much like a prayer.

It’s morning, and I feel it,
All the sins I was in last night.
Dear Jesus, please save me,
’cause I think I’ve fallen down into the depths this time.
Am I dreaming or still sleeping?
I wonder if I’m ever gonna make it out.
Now you’re gone, and I’m here,
And I feel so bitter.
Waking up alive, another day.

Sure, it could just be a turn of phrase to address Jesus after a hard night of drinking and carousing, but if you let the lyric sit, if you let the song play out as it is, if you make the pronouns address Jesus, the song becomes a very profound discussion with the Lord. The speaker feels as if he’s been left alone (“Now you’re gone, and I’m here”) since we cannot see Jesus anymore, and yet, there’s hope since he’s waking up alive another day.

Psalm 88 calls out from these kind of dark depths as well, voicing the complaint that the Lord has seemingly forgotten the speaker. But the psalm makes the argument that only those who are alive can praise the Lord. There’s a way in which the psalm points towards the conclusion which also appears in Saving Abel’s song:

It never seems easy
When you’re fighting, another day.
When I look at what I’m facing,
Don’t know if I can take it.
I could scream out loud,
But I’m wasting my time.
This pain only reminds me, I’m still alive.

The pain is intense, real, and vivid, but the speaker can at least rejoice in being alive. That sentence could be about Psalm 88 or “I’m Still Alive.” Like Pearl Jam’s “Alive,” there’s a rejoicing in life despite its difficulties, raging against life’s turbulence even while being thankful for life. That’s what comes through in Psalm 88’s desperate tones. That’s what Saving Abel wrestles with in their song—a much deeper emotion than other fare on the album about sex and machismo.

What I appreciate about “I’m Still Alive” is how it can point us back to places in Scripture like Psalm 88, the kind of places in Scripture that voice those bitter, challenging questions and feelings, those passages that lead you to offer up the best case scenario in at least being thankful for waking up alive. It isn’t the smoothed over version of religion; it isn’t the everything’s rosy kind of Christianity. “I’m Still Alive” and Psalm 88 team up for that on the ground, in the trenches approach to faith which holds onto glimpses of hope in the midst of grayness and darkness. “This pain only reminds me (I’m still alive).”

Saving Abel
Virgin Records

Three-Chord Lectionary is a series of posts that connect songs with readings from Scripture, seeing how music can send us to the music of the Bible.

Music for Relief’s effort to support Haiti with the Download to Donate collection of exclusive tracks continues a year after the crisis in Haiti, because there is still much work to be done in the impoverished, traumatized country. For $10, you get a whole slew of music, and meanwhile, you know that you are helping a great cause.

A year ago the first version of Download to Donate began with the plaintive “Not Alone” by Linkin Park. It’s a lullaby of sorts, consoling a broken soul with the comfort and promise that we are not alone.

With arms up, stretched into the sky
With eyes like, echoes in the night
Hiding from the hell that you’ve been through
Silent one, you…

Go, giving up your home
Go, leaving all you’ve known
You are not alone

This prayer of sorts echoes with the comfort and encouragement of the psalms which continually lead the traumatized, hurt, and broken back to God. He remains with us through all things. He remains with us even as we are left without what we once had, even when we’re left with very little.

The Linkin Park song echoes Psalm 102:

In my distress I groan aloud
and am reduced to skin and bones.
I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.
I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a roof.

Distress reduces us to standing and staring at the sky, wondering with the lonely, hungry owl, unprotected like the bird on the roof. Yet, there’s the promise in the song and the psalm that we are not truly alone.

He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;
he will not despise their plea.

The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high,
from heaven he viewed the earth,
to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death.

This is the thing that faith holds onto—that we are not alone, that God will respond to our prayers, that the Lord will release us from the prisons of this world. This is the hope that is spoken most clearly in Psalm 102. This is the hope hinted at in Linkin Park’s “Not Alone.” It’s a hope and prayer for Haiti, that the people would know that God is with them through such a crisis, that they wouldn’t abandon their faith during this, that they would find God among the ruins.

This is my prayer, that even in the safety and security of life in the suburbs, that I would still know that I am not alone, that God is with me through all types of traumas and difficulties, that I am not alone. I can stand staring at the sky like a hungry owl, and He will answer my cries.

Linkin Park
Music for Relief

I live one block from the entrance to Six Flags Great America, the amusement park which will wrap up the 2010 installment of Fright Fest this weekend. I live close enough to hear the screams of happy, amused park-goers. When I leave my house, I can see the orange Fright Fest flags flying and the inflatable King Kong gripping the tower.

But you will never find me Fright Fest. I’m not a roller coaster fan, and when it comes to Halloween, I’m really chicken—somewhat just because I don’t like costumes, somewhat because my faith chaffs at the darkness of it all.

Well, I suppose my aversion to Fright Fest is also related to the fact that I have no stomach for horror movies. I’m just not into being spooked, I guess.

Which makes it really strange to find myself rocking out to Saw 3D: Music Inspired By the Motion Picture. I’ll never see the movie. I’ll never know what inspired this collection of music or how it might fit into the overall series.

Instead, despite the fact that Music Spectrum rarely deals with heavy metal as such, I have the soundtrack cranked in my garage. In fact, I’d portray the collection as an entry-level disc for those wanting to explore heavy metal. Nothing gets completely dark, full on metal until the end of the disc. Rather, it begins with tracks from Saving Abel, Dead by Sunrise, and Hinder which are clearly hard rock/heavy metal, but can appeal to the rock music fan who isn’t used to such dark electricity.

The industrial/metal atmospherics of Karnivool lead the way on “Goliath” (see review of Karnivool’s album). On “Promises,” Nitzer Ebb bring an industrial, Nine Inch Nails approach to something which could be a hard-edge gloss to a Pet Shop Boys electro-pop. Default plays a grooving metal with some country twang in the vocals (just a bit), so that on “Turn It On” you can see where Country and Metal meet. Krokus sends up AC/DC-like sounds on “Hoodoo Woman.”

Kopek’s “Love is Dead” may be one of my favorite tracks with its way of declaring all to be dead, including rock ‘n’ roll, but the chorus declares:

We didn’t want to lose you
To the barrel of a gun
Don’t let the drugs confuse you
Maybe love will overcome
Everyone
And push that feeling on

There’s a way in which the track points to the biblical truth of love overcoming evil, love having victory. Rather than celebrating the fact that so many people have lost their lives to drugs, the song actually mourns their loss. (That said, the song also says that “Jesus is dead” without also acknowledging the equal truth that He rose from the dead).

So even though I have found something to celebrate here on the soundtrack, there’s always the concern that heavy metal bands are delving into Satanic worship, the occult, and such. A little searching quickly shows that Lordi (“This is Heavy Metal”), for instance, has attracted attention for the debates on whether they are a “Satanic band,” which they have denied as far as I can tell. Certainly, as with any review here at Music Spectrum, I am not vouching for these bands as being in line with my own Christian faith. However, with a critical ear, one can find truth spoken even in the music inspired by a horror film.

Saw 3D Soundtrack
Artist Addiction
SIN/Sony Music

This picture comes from my December 2008 review of AC/DC and their release, Black Ice. I argued that it won’t be long before AC/DC becomes the staple of our nostalgia radio stations in much the same way that Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Johnny Mathis are now.

Add Krokus to the list of soon-to-be-nostalgia. The Swiss band has been rocking just about as long as AC/DC with a very similar sound and style. They have returned with Hoodoo, an album that slides through guitar solos, punches some originals, plays up a cover of “Born to Be Wild,” and in general, revs the engine of the power rock genre.

Nothing here is spectacular—except for being amazed that a band with such a similar sound to AC/DC has continued to churn out its own music. Nothing will sound very new to your ears, but as you go about your summertime adventures or working around the house, as the people gather in the backyard for the barbeque, or if you need some motivation music for that 5 mile run, well, Krokus certainly fits the bill.

Krokus
Sony

In time for the summer festival season, Sent by Ravens flies in with Our Graceful Words, a growling hard rock covered in the feathers of clear-voiced Emo—perfect for the big outdoor stage. Like Day of Fire or 12 Stones, it’s a hard rock muscle car with still enough of that “right off the showroom floor” pop rock. The melodies shine with original, factory-installed pop while hoarse screams spin the tires for full effect. Give props to producer Aaron Sprinkle for helping these guys turn out this great sound.

Lyrically, I know that Sent By Ravens are trying to tell us something about the struggle to believe in God (“An Honest Heart”) and renewing the church from its materialistic state (“Jill Plays Tricks, Jack Plays God”). At least that’s what I think they’re saying. The lyrics point to faith but are not very clear. The problem isn’t so much that they don’t spell it out, but rather than they don’t even poetically lead us somewhere. The music is poised to carry something stronger.

Sent By Ravens
Tooth & Nail Records