In the words of the immortal Bill Clinton, it all depends on what the definition of “is” is.
And in this case, “Is” is amazing.
It makes me want to dance.
And I don’t often want to dance.
Wintersleep’s Welcome To The Night Sky is one of those rare albums I found in my adulthood, long after it was released. An album I can listen to over and over again. In an increasingly song-driven world, that’s a rare thing.
I used to dream about saving the world
Now i just dream about the holidays
I used to write so many songs for my girl
Now all I think about floating away
I think I need a big vacation
That says it better than I ever could.
It’s not terrible! Hooray!
All I’ve got so far. Been working on this on and off for two weeks now.
And it’s been ordered so many times already that they’ve had to stop selling it. So that tells you something about the pent-up demand for a new Godspeed record.
I’d heard rumblings about this for a while, but honestly, I never thought it would happen, especially since Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Penguin Of Doom (or whatever it’s called this week) is still apparently alive and kicking.
Either way, this is great. As you may know, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven is one of my formative albums and will always have a place in my heart. It’s on the USB key in my car (along with Jack White, Sean Hayes, Celia::Eyes, Muse, etc).
Here’s album cover:
As always, slightly inscrutable.
Music doesn’t have to be lyrical to express its intentions. Some of the best music (in my always-humble opinion) uses a lack of lyrics to its advantage.
Post-rock can be that kind of music. It can be at once violent, celebratory, peaceful, overwhelming, and subtle.
I’d like to see some of that in our church music. I mean, not every week. But sometimes. Let the music speak in its own voice, instead of simply as a vehicle for those singing in the congregation.
Playing post-rock and listening to it are very similar experiences. It’s easy to get lost in the sound, even when you’re the one making the sound.
There’s something meditative and exploratory about certain bits of post-rock. In Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s “Static”, there’s a wonderful swell out of static into a minor-key 3/3/2 pattern on the guitar and violin (if I recall correctly, that is). It sounds to me like observing the universe being created. Suddenly from nothing there is something. The random becomes purposeful.
It’s almost monastic. In a church context it would be like practising purposeful silence. Shutting up, suddenly. Instead of always talking about how we want to worship, how we’re here to worship, how we will worship… we could just worship.
I know, it sounds like something ripped from the pages of our latest bugaboo, the liberals emergent church, but bear with me.
We could perhaps discover some of the artistry we’ve lost in transitioning out of the Roman Catholic Church. We could maybe, every once in a while, do something different and new and unusual.
It might be nice. Or it might not be, depending.
I’m part of my church’s band. I enjoy music, so this makes sense for me. I play music, I read about music, I record music, and I can talk about music for a long, long time. Longer, I’m sure, than you’d want to listen.
It’s always struck me how different musicians can be in live settings.
Some are very expressive. The intensity of the music is mirrored in their faces, in the way they interact with their listeners, in the way they move their bodies.
Others are more passive and reserved. They let the music itself do the talking. They want to interact with their instrument and their music more than with the listener.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that this is some sort of binary thing. It’s not one way or the other. It’s a spectrum, and every musician falls on the spectrum somewhere, in different ways.
Here’s the question: are you willing to say that one side of the spectrum is wrong and one is right? Do you want to make a value judgement on this issues? Are you comfortable saying that every musician must be expressive, or vice versa? I imagine you’re probably not. If you’re like me, you enjoy music on all different points of that spectrum.
Different styles of music tend to favour different points on that spectrum. Classical music is very much more about the music than pop music, which is very much more about the artist. Rock and roll more is about the artist, but then there’s shoegaze, art rock, and post rock that tend to focus on the music. Again, it’s a spectrum.
I bet you’re not willing to make a value judgement on that, either. (Though conflating personal preference and absolute truth has always been an all-too-human problem.)
So why are you not willing to make that value judgement about musicians, and music, but you are willing to make it about your evangelical congregation?
It’s a good question.
There are different styles of music. There are different types of musicians. And there are different ways of worshipping.
This is true within congregations, across races, and throughout history.
And still…
There’s something inside of you that says if they’re not clapping, if they’re not raising their hands, if they don’t look enraptured or at least excited, they’re not doing it right.
But maybe it’s not them.
Maybe it’s you.
Maybe you’re that Type-A kind of person that is naturally attracted to modern church leadership (the same type of person that is naturally attracted to business leadership and other high-octane jobs). Maybe you’re looking to find yourself out in the congregation. Maybe you don’t consciously do it, but maybe you look others who worship like you do, to the exclusion of other types of people.
Not everyone worships with their body. I don’t. I find it uncomfortable and off-putting. And I’m not alone. I’ve had conversations about this with so many people who have told me the same thing. It’s not that they don’t worship, or feel a sense of worshipfulness, or gladly come to church every week to be part of the service. It’s just that worshipping like an athlete is not natural to them. And when there’s a tacit (and sometimes explicit) expectation that they should, they feel alienated.
No-one likes to go somewhere to feel alienated. But that’s exactly what’s happening in worship services all over North America right now. If there’s a non-Fundamentalist niche of churches that take less expressive people into consideration, I haven’t found it. Or heard of it. Or heard anyone talking about it.
We used to have a traditional, down-tempo service at my church. We don’t any more, and I miss it. I miss playing it, and I miss worshipping in it. It was slower, less animated, and felt more worshipful to me. It was, in a word, more natural. It fit my temperament, my playing style, my nature.
That sounds a bit selfish, but I’m not the only person in the world with my personality and my temperament. I think I might actually be in the majority.
Sometimes we talk in band about the first service as it stands now. It’s more reserved. I’ve heard complaints about the atmosphere of it. We’re playing clapping music and no-one’s clapping. We’re playing dancing music and no-one’s dancing. We’re playing exciting music and you don’t look particularly excited.
That’s just not fair.
Maybe the problem isn’t with the people. Maybe the problem is your expectations. Maybe the problem isn’t them… but you.
I’m not here to be a curmudgeon. (Get off my lawn!) Really, I’m not. But you need to like fewer things. You need to be more selective. You need to insist on a higher standard of quality.
If this means watching fewer films, so be it. Only go to see the few that interest you. Don’t go and see everything that comes out of the off-chance some of it might be good.
No only will you save quite a bit of money, but you’ll expose yourself to a whole raft of new things you’d never have though of finding before. After all, when you turn off your shitty radio station, you have time to fill the silence with something new. And believe me, with the amount of stuff out there, you’ll find something new and interesting before you know it.
As a society we’re quite tolerant of things that don’t last. For most things, that’s fine. History will sort it out. But if everything is impermanent, if everything is disposable, if everything is crap, where’s the 10% that history can sort out?
Jars of Clay was my introduction to good music. I was just coming out of the woods of Steve Green, Michael Card, & John Michael Talbot when Jars came along. I wasn’t impressed at first, of course, being the horrible little turd that I was, but a few years passed, I turned on their self-titled disc, and I was enchanted.
There’s something about your initiation into something. A different world of, say, adulthood, or a realm of things previously hidden. Jars of Clay made me think “wow, you can do that?” with music.
Since then, we’ve parted ways a bit. Where Jars of Clay has gone the way of accessible, Christian-friendly music, I’ve been plumbing the depths of the odd and unusual.
This would be where I used to nose the ceiling a bit, but let’s just admit there’s different kinds of music for different kinds of people. And that’s a good thing. Not everyone like Sufjan Stevens, and not everyone likes Kelly Clarkson. That’s just the way it is. I like music with adventure. That’s just who I am. My taste in music isn’t magically better than yours, but please don’t take it badly if I suggest a few diversions from the tried and true. Again, that’s just who I am.
This was were it all began. Strings boiling to the surface, fantastic grooves, obtuse or at least semi-opaque lyrics, and great tunes. The production here was obviously done on a shoestring, but none of the songs falter for it. Even its most celebrated child, Flood was an oddly monochromatic journey, an almost-minimalistic acoustic rock song unlike any I had heard before.
This album changed me. I don’t mean to be melodramatic. It really did. I still listen to this release, not simply for the nostalgia (listening to MWS’s “Change Your World” was built for that, I think), but also because it’s really, really great music.
There must have been so much pressure on the group after the phenomenal success of their debut. It must have been awful trying to make music under that much pressure. But they did.
I’ll admit, I didn’t like “Much Afraid” when it first came out. I listened to it but didn’t buy it. It seemed a radical departure from their sound (though I imagine they’d say their first album was the radical departure). It wasn’t, at least to me, very Jars of Clay. Real drums? Regular tunings? No strange lyrical and musical twists?
Years later, I’ve come back and looked “Much Afraid” in the face. I can see why they named it that. I can see how much time and effort they poured into the record trying to make it solid and original, and I like it for that. The standout songs–not the obvious radio hits–are far better than I remember them. Overjoyed in particular is a wonderful tribute to the craft of songwriting.
I’m sorry I didn’t get it for so long. I really am. But I’m glad I came back to this (and I have to thank Laura for that, mostly; she insisted on listening to it even when I didn’t feel like it), and as time has worn on “Much Afraid” has gotten better and better.
I think every band has this record. They’re sick of the grind, they’re sick of the pressure, and they bring in a well-known producer to make a different sort of album. Of course, I hadn’t exactly had enough time to get used to any particular Jars of Clay sound, so they didn’t really have a left field for me. Then “If I Left The Zoo” came out of, and defined, their left field.
I get it. I do. You want to throw a curve ball. Some of the best music I’ve heard (“Kid A”, anyone?) comes out of left field. But for me, this records felt, and still feels, over-produced. As if they’re trying to hard to be different and original and weird and quirky. I don’t like it. I really tried to like it when I first bought the record, but this is one record that really, really didn’t improve with repeated listens. And now, staring down the barrel of history, it hasn’t improved with time, either.
I realize I’m not supposed to like this album. It’s straight-up radio-friendly pop. There’s nothing challenging about it. It’s smooth like wine from a box is smooth. And yet I love it.
Don’t confuse me with a hipster, here. I don’t like it because I’m not supposed to like it. I like it in spite of that. Maybe it was what I was going through at the time, but a lot of these songs hit a chord of unrequited love and longing. The songs still bring me back to that place, to a shadow of those feelings.
And that’s the ball game. If a song can make you feel without feeling manipulated, it’s good. It’s really that simple. (Of course, not all music is built to make you feel. Steve Reich can pretty much fill up that corner of the room by himself. But feelings are a really, really great shortcut to the logic of living.)
Furthermore is how Jars of Clay does a retrospective. It’s really cool. I love it when bands release two, three, even four versions of a song. I love to examine a piece of music from all angles, like a well-designed automobile or an elegant woman. Getting these stripped-down versions of classic Jars of Clay songs was a fitting gift for the band’s fans, I think. And most of them worked very well, except for the songs from “Eleventh Hour”, which sounded pretty much the same.
If I could ask for one thing, I’d be that every band’s retrospective delivers like “Furthermore” did.
And I guess this is how Jars of Clay does a worship album. I’m sure this bad boy was stipulated in their contract somewhere. There’s a lot of faint praise to be had for this album. If I say it stands head and shoulders above other albums in its genre, that’s hardly a compliment.
It’s solid, I guess. Some of the hymns sound awkward being shoe-horned into modern tunes. Also, it’s hymns, right? I don’t listen to Jars of Clay to hear somebody else’s songs.
I’m probably not alone in having a hard time figuring out what this album is supposed to be. There doesn’t seem to be a grand thread holding it together. More than anything, it feels like a collection of songs someone happened to have lying around, and a lap steel & slide someone else had just learned to play.
Not to say there aren’t any great songs on here. There are plenty. A couple stinkers, but a lot of really great music. I’m hoping that “Who We Are Instead” improves with age like “Much Afraid” did. I really do want to come back to this a few years down the road and appreciate it more then than I do now.
Ah, “Good Monsters”. How I hate you.
This is where Jars of Clay and I really parted company. I can’t stand the sound of this record. It completely turned me off of Jars of Clay. I hate to say it, but it’s true: This album is the point where I went from being a peripheral fan to not being a fan at all.
More uncharted territory for the band, yes. But not all uncharted territory is good territory. Nothing about this record plays to the band’s strengths.
I listened to it a few times, pained, and I’ve never gone back.
When Derek Webb released “Stockholm Syndrome”, I wasn’t sure what to think. How could someone seemingly so deep in the countryside of acoustic music ever release an essentially electronic album? Of course, Derek always finds ways to surprise (and sometimes shock). It worked for him.
It kind of worked for Jars of Clay. Where they lean on electronica heavily, the album succeeds. Where they drift back into saccharine adult contemporary pop, it doesn’t.
I really need to listen to this album again. Maybe even a few times, just to get a grip on what they’ve done and what they’ve tried to. But you know what? I’m not terribly driven to do it.
It’s not that I’ve gone somewhere odd. I still like the same sort of music I always did. Caedmon’s Call still manages to crank out great albums after all these years, albums that play to their strengths. I haven’t started to look down on anything that isn’t semi-ambient metal drone.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s me. I think it’s Jars of Clay. I think they’ve taken the inventiveness of their earlier music and traded it in for a sort of comfortable living deep in the sleepy hills of the Shire. (Third wall: I almost typed “shite” there.) While the rest of the music world is doing things and going places, they’re just sort of meandering along, making smooth song after smooth song.
If this depresses you, you’re not alone. It’s been a long time now; I’d love to plead with Jars of Clay to see the art in themselves.
Here’s a quick question. Why are we biased in favour of new music in worship?
I get this a lot when talking about worship, and I see it in myself too. I lean towards new music. I like to sing songs that reflect my comfort zones, songs that exist in my vernacular.
There’s something disconnected about that, I think. Something off. I mean, we don’t exist apart from the rest of church history. Why would we sing only our own songs? Why not the songs (and Psalms, too; remember that Israel is as much a part of church history as the early church) of our forefathers? We have their faith, after all. We use their theological terms. We rest our faith at least partly on the tradition passed down through history. So why do we so quickly jettison one of the great traditions of the church, namely the songs?
Giving the saints of yesteryear a voice in the goings-on of the modern church is a good exercise in continuity that we’re missing out on. Hymns and psalms aren’t just for the grumpy old people ossifying in their seats. They’re for everyone; they’re a way of saying that we place ourselves firmly in the flow of church history, that we’re not modernist snobs who think we’ve got the best music ever invented.
There’s another question, about why we assume that people jumping around and showing energy and “getting into” the music is always a good thing, or why we assume the Holy Spirit is synonymous with adrenaline, but I’ll leave that for another time.