Posted by Mark on 04-17-2008 at10:24:
77s in New York TimesNew York Times
Living With Music:
A Playlist by Daniel Radosh
By Dwight Garner
Daniel Radosh (Dave Anderson)On Wednesdays, this blog is the delivery vehicle for “Living With Music,” a playlist of songs from a writer or some other kind of book-world personage.
This week: Daniel Radosh, author of “Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture.”
Daniel Radosh’s April 2008 Playlist:
This is a list of 10 great Christian rock songs. Really. I know what you’re thinking. I’m a secular Jew who always took it for granted that Christian rock stinks. Indeed, until a couple of years ago I knew virtually nothing about Christian rock except that it stinks. But after spending time inside the “evangelical bubble” I had to admit I was mistaken. It turns out there’s Christian music that never gets played on those radio stations you accidentally stumble across on road trips — and that doesn’t reduce all expressions of faith to crass evangelism, anodyne praise, or crypto-romance.
Skeptics can listen to the songs for themselves here.
1) Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus?, Larry Norman. Norman, who died in February, was often called the father of Christian rock, an accolade he understandably spent his life fleeing from. Norman’s gritty “Jesus music” of the late 60s and early 70s bears little resemblance to homogenized ballads that the contemporary Christian music industry would later become known for. In this bluesy stomp, reminiscent of the Band at their best, he uses a series of rhymed couplets to sketch an indelible portrait of an archetypal hippie whose search for bliss isn’t quite panning out. The song’s wicked humor and uncompromising darkness are encapsulated in what is possibly the most awesome lyric ever in Christian rock: “Gonorrhea on Valentine’s Day, and you’re still looking for the perfect lay.”
2) Kiss Me, Sixpence None The Richer. O.K., maybe this isn’t a great song, but it’s a pretty good one, and most people actually know it so it will help me explain what Christian rock is and isn’t. This jangly pop tune, lifted somewhat above its station by singer Leigh Nash’s lovely voice, was an inescapable mainstream hit in 1999. The lyrics are unabashedly romantic: “Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance, silver moon sparkling, so kiss me.” And if you’re looking for a covert message about Jesus in them, there isn’t one. “We don’t experience faith as a compartmentalized, religious aspect of life,” Nash has said. “I don’t feel like I’m more of a Christian when I’m saying my prayers than when I’m kissing my husband.” While it should be generally possible to discern a Christian worldview permeating an artist’s oeuvre, their Christianity would arguably be less authentic if they limited their focus to explicit pronouncements of faith. As T-Bone Burnett (who almost made this list) put it, “If Jesus is the light of the world, there are two kinds of songs you can write. You can write songs about the light, or you can write songs about what you can see from the light.”
3) Born, Over the Rhine. Karin Bergquist may be the finest singer in the alt-country / Americana scene right now, striking the perfect balance between earthy sensuality and ethereal grace. This heartbreakingly intimate song from the band’s 2005 album “Drunkard’s Prayer” offers as fine an expression as you could hope for of how a Christian is called to live, without stooping to any false promises of rainbows and rose gardens: “I was born to laugh, I learned to laugh through my tears. I was born to love, I’m gonna learn to love without fear.”
4) Every Grain of Sand, Bob Dylan. One reason most Christian rock really does stink is that much of the genre is saddled by a belief that Christian musicians are simply ministers who happen to use music as a tool, and who must employ only unambiguous, propositional lyrics so that listeners can’t possibly be led astray. Even Dylan fell into that trap in his first two “born again” albums. There are some fine songs on “Slow Train Coming” and “Saved” — he was still Bob Dylan, after all — but he seemed to have suddenly become afraid of poetry. Only on the last album of the trilogy that marked his “Christian” career did Dylan loosen his grip on the reins and produce this complex testament of faith that stands with the best of his work. Of course, Dylan’s catalog — before and since his born again period — is replete with songs that reflect at least a fascination with Christian theology. If you count these, there is probably no greater Christian rock song — and few greater rock songs, period — than “Shelter From the Storm,” which uses explicit Gospel imagery to paint a harrowing portrait of sinful man separated from God and in search of redemption.
5) The Lust, The Flesh, The Eyes and The Pride of Life, the 77s. Given the relentlessly upbeat tone of Christian radio — “Positive music! Safe for your family!” as the announcers like to say — you might forget that the Bible does not guarantee a carefree life for believers. The best Christian rock wrestles with those things that “drain the life right out of me,” in the words of this 1987 meditation on 1 John 2:16. You don’t have to be a Christian to recognize that we all spend too much time chasing after possessions and fleeting joys that we don’t really need. This Springsteen-esque rocker offers no pat answers, it just raises some important questions.
6) Rapture, Pedro the Lion. Before he finally (or so he says) abandoned the Christian music scene sometime around 2006, Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan delighted in shaking the faith of his churchgoing audiences. Bazan apparently believed that faith without doubt breeds a dangerous righteousness. So it must have been a calculated thumb in the eye to write a chorus like, “Oh, my sweet rapture, I hear Jesus calling me home” for a song about a torrid extramarital affair. “Gideon is in the drawer, clothes scattered on the floor.” Rapture is not celebratory (few of Bazan’s emo-tinged songs are), but it’s honest enough to admit that some things that are wrong can feel pretty right.
7) Nice and Blue (Part 2), mewithoutYou. This sonically adventurous indie rock ensemble has fiercely devoted following that often seems to revere singer-songwriter Aaron Weiss as a modern-day prophet. In this 2006 song, Weiss brings the full power of his pleading speech-singing — think early Neil Young — to a visionary epic of self-recrimination for his persistent failure to accept God’s grace. Weiss is “caught like a bear by the bees with its hand in the hive, who complains of the pain of the sting when I’m lucky I got out alive.” Like Mike Roe of the 77s, he is doomed (at least, withoutYou) to pursue useless pleasures “strapped like a watch on my wrist that’s finished with gold but can’t tell the time.”
My Apology, Jonathan Rundman. Despite its literally confessional lyrics, this is a bright, catchy indie-pop song. Rundman, who recorded this for a 2001 double album called “Sound Theology,” is one of the few mainline Christians (he’s Lutheran) writing recognizably Christian rock. Like most people, Rundman has trouble confessing his sins, at one point attempting to justify his cynicism of the church by pointing out to God that “I’m surrounded by bigots and fools who say your love is a heavenly paycheck and faith is all about rules.” But then, like a good, anguished Lutheran (and indie rocker) he acknowledges that he’s “guilty of going the opposite way” as he “sit[s] here cheapening grace.”9) You Know That (Is Nothing New), Vigilantes of Love. A deliciously infectious power pop song that would fit comfortably in a mix with Marshall Crenshaw, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and even the Kinks. This song would have dominated mainstream rock radio in 2001 if it hadn’t been on a Christian label. Not that there’s any message in the lyrics a secularist could object to. It’s a love song — or perhaps a love of life song — that never gets more preachy than, “It’s the opening of hearts that is the closing of the deepest wounds.”
10) Come On, Andy Hunter. Christian techno music is one of the hardest genres for non-Christians to get their heads around. If there are no lyrics, what makes it Christian? I’ve dodged the issue here by choosing a track that does have one shouted line: “Let your kingdom come.” Hunter, a British DJ, is equally at home spinning at worship services and in secular clubs. The deliriously propulsive “Come On” pops up regularly in video games and movie trailers (most recently for “Speed Racer”). Given how irresistibly energizing it is, that shouldn’t be a surprise, but somehow it is. Maybe minimal lyrics is what it takes for Christian music to get a fair hearing in the wider world.
I dislike Springsteen......
