Quincessentials – Relient K & David Crowder Band

By Brian Q. Newcomb

Relient K

Forget and Not Slow Down

RCA/Jive

Relient K has developed a reputation for it’s bright bold fun pop/punk and a clever sense of humor, stretched across 12 years and now 6 albums.  They are a band that wears the “Christian rock” label without making it feel like a cross they have to bear.  They also regularly play to secular fans on the Warped tour and with secular bands in mainstream clubs when that pairing makes sense.  I have a 12-year-old who thinks that they (along with Switchfoot—see my review of their new one at ucc.org/news) are one of the best bands in the world.  I wouldn’t go as far as he does, but I do think he’s got great taste in music.

Centered around the talents of singer/songwriter Matt Thiessen, and named for the car that the band used to get to their earliest gigs around their hometown of Canton, Ohio, which belonged to long-time partner and guitarist Matt Hoopes, Relient K caught on fast.  Early on it was their smart, witty take on 80’s and 90’s pop culture that informed the most popular songs, “Sadie Hawkins Dance,” “Chap Stick, Chapped Lips and Things Like Chemistry,” “Mood Rings” and “In Love With the 80’s (Pink Tux to the Prom),” which mixed adolescent insecurities about budding sexual feelings and romantic longings with thoughts about self-worth rooted in God’s love and care.

But being clever consistently, continuously, can be harder than it looks and, as we all know, growing up is hard to do… which is a cliché that no one confuses with clever.  Do you see the challenge?  Over the years, Thiessen has found a credible balance between his kid-pop smart-aleck early works and his growing songwriter sensibilities.  You can’t approach 30 and still be writing songs about taking your girlfriend to the prom without a few questions coming up, but can you mature and still connect?

Growing up as an artist, in public no less, can be a hard thing to pull off.  On this, Relient K’s 6^th full-length CD, not counting the Christmas record and other one off recordings, Thiessen’s sounding more and more like a serious grown-up songwriter… and, while it’s not what you’d expect at first, that’s a good thing.  Thiessen returns to co-produce with long-time collaborator Mark Townsend (an amazing guitarist in his own right, back in the day), and it sounds every bit as good as the last recording that came through the Howard Benson machinery.  The trick is, fans who found the band back in its heyday are growing up along side the band which makes the new songs relevant, but I’ve noticed at Warped and live still, they don’t forget to revisit those older, early, lively, punny, funny songs.

The lead track is the title song, which goes after the issue of “forgiving, and forgetting.”  It addresses the inner struggle to live with one’s mistakes, find forgiveness and move on, and still maintain a positive self worth.  It comes down to this line:  “if I’ve become what I can’t accept/ Resurrect the saint from within the wretch/ Pour over me and wash my hands of it.”  It’s Augustine’s “Confessions,” with a thankfully more well-rounded worldview, one that refuses to lose too much time in regret.  And it’s fun rock song at that.  Who knew?

Another great song, driven my a fun aggressive bass line, is “Part Of It,” finds us connected to each other for good and for ill.  We are stuck together, maybe not with glue, but “we’re a part of it, everyone, we’re a part of it, everything.”  And while the song has a great reference to an iconic brat-packy “coming of age” 80’s movie moment (“I’m the Cusack on the lawn of your heart” – remember J.C. as Lloyd Dobler in “Say Anything,” standing outside Iona Skye’s bedroom in the rain with his blaster above his head playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes”?), but the song is about gaining a sense of perspective, and growing up and taking responsibility.

But of course, the songs I like the most are the rockers.  The best thing here is also the most aggressive, “Sahara,” with a great guitar chord progression again deals with the whole coming of age conundrum:  “Supposedly a man but I felt like a cub.”  But the best analogy comes from Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones, “I’m not alone, I’ll be alright, Just take these bones and breathe them back to life.”  It hearkens back to “Forgive and Not Slow Down,” which asks to “resurrect the saint from within the wretch.”

There are a lot more songs, some love song, some love lost, all of them solid and memorable, if mellower then I and my 12 year old are likely to repeat just after they played, as we often do with “Sahara.”  Thiessen & Co. are getting older and more mature, and that always includes some growing pains, but if Forget and Not Slow Down is an indicator as to where they’re headed, I think we can continue to expect good things.

David Crowder*Band

Church Music

Six Step/Sparrow

The David Crowder Band, or David Crowder*Band, or whatever, gives me cause to discuss the current fascination with what has become a dominant subgenre of the “contemporary Christian music” world, as well as one of what is likely to be the best selling and more popular ccm albums of the year.

Now, I admit, I’m no fan of the “praise & worship” worldview, but my problems are largely theological, and have little to do with the music.  But, let’s be clear most praise music sounds more 60’s, 70’s and 80’s rooted, than anything anyone would call “contemporary.”  But, let’s be clear, of course I can deal with guitars, etc. in worship, and can also appreciate the traditional pipe organ takes on classical music themes.  My problem with the genre has more to do with its tendency toward the hyper-individualistic, platonic, privatistic experience, often phrased in language that espouses a patriarchal, royal heritage rooted in past conventions.  Add to that its promotion of a “forced joy,” as opposed to a more honest and authentic expression which is sometimes pressed to the point of irrational denial, that I see celebrated as worship in most of this music.

[Reviewer’s warning:  at this point, I’m going to spend a bunch of graphs explaining what I think is wrong with praise music… so you may want to skip down if you’re only interested in my thoughts on DC*B]

To begin with, while most of this music borrows largely from the praise language of our Psalter, the 150 canonical Psalms of scripture, they avoid with a passion, or quickly diminish the harsher language of lament that provides ballast and balance to the praise psalms in our Bible.  In the Hebrew Psalter, individuals and whole communities cry out to God about the injustice, confusion and threat, fear and anxiety that has taken hold in their very real and troubled lives.  They cry out, “How long” must we endure this (Ps. 40)?  They ask “My God, why have you forsaken me (Ps. 22)?”  To quote Psalms scholar and Eden Theological Seminary professor Clint McCann, without the balancing, leavening presence of honest lament, praise tends be experienced as a pretext for self-congratulation and self-promotion, perpetuating a system that is preferential toward the privileged, prosperous and powerful.

Plus, when life’s realities are hard and painful, our faith tradition offers resources to cope, that are short-circuited if we rush to some false sense of resolution.  Another way of saying that same thing is that praise without lament is often dishonest, or worse delusional.  Early on, I grew up in a tradition that told me to “put on a happy face.”  That walking with God would mean that our lives were more or less trouble-free and easy.  So acknowledging that things were going poorly was not only suspect (practically heretical if you believed in the magical idea that if you said a negative word or had a serious doubt somehow you were limiting God’s ability to “bless” you), or probably there was something wrong with us, perhaps we had the wrong kind of or not enough faith.  I don’t think that attitude is scriptural or helpful.  I think it does far more harm than anyone in that belief system would ever admit.  I don’t think worship requires pretense or some mind over matter trick.

Rather, I believe God loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are, and the lament Psalms show that God can handle our honest complaints, our open hearted and open-minded expressions of grief, sadness, confusion and worry.  In fact, I believe the laments reveal that that is exactly what God wants us to do and say, to own our troubles and speak them to the heart of God, and thus fully open ourselves to God’s presence.  When I hear most praise music, full of these blanket, ambiguous praises that “God is good,” it’s not that that isn’t a true statement and that I haven’t experienced God’s goodness, its just that it’s not the whole truth of my experience.

Yes, God is good, and sometimes, hell, often, life is hard.  When that spirit of honest lament is not held together with the words of praise, I feel that our real lives are not being taken seriously, and that the folk running the show are dangerously close to trying to manipulate us emotionally and, more seriously, theologically by espousing an unrealistic, unlivable spirituality.  A theology that does more harm than good by making God seem aloof and distant, holy and uninterested in our real struggles, unless of course we buck up and say the magic words.  If it’s mind over matter, grit your teeth and smile through your pain, or too easy and sounds too good to be true, then it’s probably not the good news of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, which seeks to transform us not into some passive praise choir, but into the active people of God’s loving Beloved Community.

The model of the African American spirituals and the Psalms should remind us to hold lament and praise together.  They are two sides of the same coin.  And that brings me to the issue of the personal vs. the private, and the issue of whether this music takes us where we need to go and be, and tells us what we need to do.  The spirituals sung a hundred and fifty years ago by slaves, and still sung today by the grand-children of slaves, are rooted in the desire for freedom that included not only the promise of heaven in the afterlife, but escape from their shackles in this life.  That Gospel Train was both the ride into God’s presence and the underground railroad which promised liberty to the north and beyond to Canada, but very really on this side of the mortal coil.  The experience of praise involved an honest expression of their longing.  Today’s most popular contemporary praise music lacks that multi-dimensionality, in fact in its platonic non-political passivity it tends to work counter to that broader understanding.  If God calls us to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God,” as it says in Micah 6:8, why doesn’t more modern worship music stress these active roles?

In addition, the simplistic repetitive praise choruses lack the theological depth and social gospel leanings of the great hymns of the church.  Take great hymns like “For the Beauty of the Earth” and “Morning Has Broken” that celebrate the experience of God in the created world, inspiring a sense of ecological stewardship, albeit implicit.  Or take “The Church’s One Foundation” which holds together the laments and struggles of life, the divisions that perplex us, even the words “how long?” with the assertion that we will attain a “mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won,” before calling us to active living in community with and on behalf of the “meek and lowly.”  Or “We Would Be Building” or “Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life,” where as recipients of God’s grace and love, we are called into active service in the church, for the people of God’s world.

Compare that with the weak and disturbing theology of the popular praise chorus “Awesome God,” where God is to be feared, for in verse one God kicks a fallen humanity out of the Garden, and in the second verse burns up the community of Sodom.  Hmm, really awesome, I suppose.  Plus, most praise music embraces patriarchal and royal language that demeans at least half of the audience of gifted and talented women on the one hand, and on the other hand makes religious thought all the more “other worldly” by speaking “King of Kings” and “Lord of Lords,” to a bunch of people who have only known representational democracy, and have little appreciation for kings or lords.  Add that together with lots of antiquated, unscientific language about God coming down “from above” as if the world is flat and that heaven’s above the clouds (and hell probably just below the ground), and frankly, I’m not impressed.  This is not relevant to the vast cosmic universe we now know is out there.

I’m sure some praise chorus you learned at church camp is okay in that setting, and it may be fine for you, maybe, but give me the old hymns if that’s the best we can do.  Such antiquated language, dominated by male pronouns for God, and ancient concepts or creedal assertions that seem meaningless or irrelevant in modern life without the help of some framing or explanation only adds to my frustration and confusion.

Why again is this music, these words called “contemporary”?  Especially, when in modern hymns by Brian Wren, Ruth Duck, and others we have escaped the ancient cosmology, patriarchal dominance of male-favoring language and social irrelevance.  I’d rather sing “Bring Many Names” (Wren) and “To God Compose a Song of Joy” (Duck) than “Sing Your Praise to The Lord,” with all it’s capital “H,” “give your heart to Him” language.  Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think so.

[I now return you to the review of David Crowder*Band, already in progress.]

All that said, David Crowder and band can rise above this form as often as they exemplify its greatest weaknesses, and Church Music, more often than not, provides a reasonable entry into the praise and worship genre.  Well, more often the not, the music reminds me of 80’s techno, like the disco groove that opens the disc’s title track, “Church Music – Dance [!].”  Lots of times, I hear echoes of songs like Dead Or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” and other blasts from the past, including a number of synth runs that sound like they could be borrowed from Eddie Murphy movie soundtracks, running here and there, throughout Church Music.  There’s no sin in appropriating cool sounds, but when most of them are rooted in the past, are we still thinking “contemporary” or “original”?

That said, there’s a lot to recommend musically, like the guitar solo at the end of “Dance [!]” and the jamming close to “God Almighty, None Compares” rocks a pretty mean groove.  Again, it’s a pretty familiar riff, but then again, what’s not familiar these days.  DCB is not breaking incredibly fresh ground, which is nothing new to the ccm world, but it does an admirable job over the course of the 17 songs here of keeping things interesting and lively.

But, of course, as I stated earlier in that long tangent, the real issue for me is the language and lyrics.  In the opening “Phos Hilaron,” Crowder has put music to an anonymous 4^th Century Christian witness, translated to 19^th Century English.  Well, it shouldn’t be hard for the rest of the record to sound hip and happening, if that’s your starting point, but often Crowder & Co.’s original lyrics maintain that rather ancient formulation.

In “Alleluia, Sing,” which has a bit of a U2 feel, I was heartened to see the phrase “Like justice to the weak,” but a bit dismayed that the song, as the title suggests, only calls us “to sing of love.”  It would have been so simple to write a verse connecting the love of God to acts of kindness and justice, don’t you think?

In “The Nearness,” they expresses in traditional, nearly creedal terms the immanence of God’s salvation, while “Shadows” touches on the presence of sorrow and darkness in human experience before quickly moving to our rest “in the shadow of the cross.”  And of course, there’s the “He” who brings for day and light, without an explanation if that is a name for God or Jesus…  did I mention I’m not found of the capital H, he or him as references to the divine?  To me, it too easily makes God a patriarchal voice of convention, when the biblical documents offer us so many colorful images for God’s action and presence, why do folk fall back so consistently on this male dominated one?

In “Eastern Hymn” Crowder equates the presence of the divine with the experience of “love” and “peace,” but here we are recipients of these signs of grace, rather than active channels of those qualities into the rest of the world.  In the end, we weep with emotion as those touched by grace, but Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers,” why not move us beyond our worship to works and deeds of love and peace-making?

And so it goes, in Church Music.  “We Are Loved” and that is quite enough.  As a people “surrounded in white, oh purest bride, no lovelier sight, the Church will rise,” but to what … to do the work of God’s redeeming in the world, the bring forth the fruit of the reign of God?  It’s not clear, it appears that rising is enough.

“How He Loves” us, says the song of that title.  And “Can I Lie Here (in Your Arms)” suggests that this is an intimate, almost physical love… it’s a bit strange, don’t you think?  This protective love, which is “All Around Me,” appears to function to protect us from the defiling of touch of the world.  Worship and praise in this context becomes something other than Christian worship to my mind, as it embraces an escapism that is not modeled on the teaching or action of the person of Jesus.  It’s as if, this music serves a therapeutic function for Christians who lack the assurance or self esteem to be the followers of Christ in redeeming the world.

What I hear here feels more platonic, more isolated and removed from the world of human experience than I expect from one who is following Jesus into the home of Zacchaeus, or who warns his disciples not to become removed from the people the way the Pharisees have with their lofty uninvolved self-directed prayers, but who sits at table with those who are of ill-repute, and loving them breaks bread and includes them at his table.  Where is the Jesus who reminds us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, who empowers us to be light in the world’s darkness to love those who are unlovable?  Fine, Jesus loves us, but Jesus desires to transform us so that God’s love can flow through us into the world of everyday life, with its brokenness, injustice and great need. 

The image I get as I listen to this coded language of Christian worship for the initiated, is that of a circle holding hands facing inward and up to God, but with their back turned to the world.  I’m reminded of the late Gene Wehrli, of Eden Seminary, who taught us that the Church is to turn toward the world, with our arms open as Jesus was to the lonely, to the hurting and hungry.  Worship music that keeps its back to this world, ultimately falls short of what I’m looking for when I gather to be the church with sisters and brothers of faith.  Did not Jesus say, God so loved the world… I’m just saying.