reflecting: Mark 6:53-56

Amidst all the commotion of Jesus walking on water (and rightfully so, I mean he WALKED ON WATER!), we may have totally skipped over the healing in Gennesaret that Mark records afterwards.

This little episode shows the crowd’s immediate (a great Markan word) recognition of Jesus and how they flock to him for healing.  What ensues is the oddest kind of mayhem.  Jesus gets rushed by all sorts of people, misfits and outcasts, wherever he goes.  If they can but “touch the hem of his garment they’ll be made whole.”  This is the same desperation we saw in the interruption in Chapter 5 (Mark 5:21-43) as Jesus was en route to Jairus’ dead daughter.

I’ll go ahead and out myself…I’ve probably been to hundreds of concerts and, Lord willing, will go to many more yet, but the first concert I ever attended was at the Daytona Beach Ocean Center in 1992.  Two as yet unknown acts, TLC & Boyz II Men, opened for MC Hammer’s 2 Legit 2 Quit tour.  My best friend in third grade and me rushed out of our seats, leaving his chaperone mom in her seat, desperate to try and get a hand on those famous parachute pants as Hammer moved freely about the arena flaunting his brilliant new wireless microphone headset technology.  We elbowed and vied, only to get boxed-out by some screaming girls, who needless to say, hit their growth spurt before we did.

All joking aside though, I’m indicted by the fact that my most diligent attempt to get to somebody in a crowd, that I can remember, was not, and tends not to be, me getting to Jesus.  In these gospel stories, I’m most struck by how Jesus is the obvious hope for these people’s hopelessness.  

This is not obvious to me most of the time.  

I go through most of my days trying either to ignore the hopeless moments or areas of my life, drowning them out with shear busy-ness, or attempting to solve my own problems so that I don’t have to go through the hassle of having Jesus heal me.

Jesus, make me desperate for the healing that I need and that you offer.  

Show me the ways I clutch at other things and people that aren’t you and can’t do what you can do.  

Let me recognize you immediately in my life and in the lives of others who are hurting.  

Amen

A bit better musical accompaniment to Mark 6:53-56.

review: David Rosenfield- Son of Ojito

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on July 13, 2011.

To start, David Rosenfield’s Son of Ojito promises an interesting mix, a veritable gumbo, of poetry, folk, blues, punk-rock storytelling. The fourteen tracks seethe with pledges of unorthodox hippy ditties in the vane of mewithoutYou or Edward Sharpe, but ultimately fail to deliver the goods on that oath. The result is an album of busky, suitcase songs, tinged with open-mic emoting and Shel Silverstein jejunery.

This album was incredibly approachable and, for me, initially appealing. Lest you think I’m being too hard on this one, let me try to explain. I wanted to love it; I wanted to sink my teeth into the zanily imaginative snapshots. To put it culinarily: I wasn’t expecting fine dining. I wasn’t hungry for fillet or lobster. I didn’t expect silverware or cloth napkins. I was okay with that. It seemed Rosenfield’s album was to be some sort of fused streetfood, served in a corn tortilla out of the side of an old plumbing truck, alloying cultures and sensibilities. I readied my taste-(ear)buds, and prepared a makeshift bib out of a single-ply napkin, but when I took my first bite, it lacked the basics, the salt and the pepper, and the chicken was a bit on the pink side.

Underdeveloped, most tunes lacked the passion and believability they warranted. Sing It exudes some of the Danielsonian charm, laced with dormy acoustics and a campy chorus, that this artist and album are capable of. “Streetlights Playing Dixie” sounds like a song begun in one of John Darnielle’s old notebooks, while “The Cat’s Meowing” too bears some of the marks of playful potential.

Rosenfield will undoubtedly continue to cook. My hope is not only that these tunes continue to marinate and develop, but also that he hones his unique recipes into something even more square and satisfying.

Rating: 2.5/10

Hymns from the Gathering Church Kickstarter

A very important project to me that I’m currently working on:

My church (the Gathering Church, Durham, NC) is beginning work on a full-length record of Christian hymns re-spun by our rotating casts of musicians and special guests.  I realize that we’re in trying economic times, but I can truly testify that this project is no less than mission-critical to who our church is, where we are going, what we’re called to be.

Our three emphases (by no means innovative) at the Gathering Church are presence before God, connection to one another in community, and engagement with the world.  The hymns that we’re getting our hands on are even less novel than the worship our Church hopes to share in.  In a lot of ways we’ve come to realize that looking back is our best way forward, and that old idioms can nourish our devotion in surprising ways.  This record of reworked songs will serves as a worship/devotional companion, hopefully successful in both clinging to old stories of gospel-fidelity while jarring loose the corrosion that comes with familiarity.

You may ask, if this is so critical, why didn’t it make it even make a line item in the church budget?  By using innovative fund-raising techniques like www.kickstarter.com (sometimes referred to as “crowd-sourcing”) we hope to generate and renew an important culture of artistic patronage within our local community (inside and alongside of the church).  Understanding the vitality and gratuity of such endeavors pairs with my understanding of the gospel of grace that these songs sound.

These songs “make sense” within our community.  By that I mean, all of the songs we’ll commit to production have been integral to our Sunday worship at some point.  They all have concrete connections to our particular community.  These memories span child dedications, Holy Week services, kids’ devotions, baptisms, communion, and of course, ordinary time.  They train us in a new way to speak to each other.  They anticipate the choruses we’ll belt when we’re granted true union with Christ and one another.

But these songs aren’t only “ours.”  We’ve also found that they are disarmingly accessible to even the most hardened cynic.  Their melodies and content have a mysterious ability to bring people into a space of exploration and participation in the worship of the Triune God.  These mere tunes profess a profound confidence in the creativity and redemption of the Holy Spirit at work in the world.

Finally, my hope is that my excitement about this project be evident and that you’ll consider partnering in some way with this undertaking, even as you are already an invaluable partner in the Gospel of God in Christ Jesus.

Here are streams for some of the guest artists to be featured, for your enjoyment:

review: Skylar Gudasz & The Ugly Girls- Two Headed Monster

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on June 7, 2011.

After the bizarre announcement earlier this year that Rufus Wainwright would father the resulting offspring of himself and Leonard Cohen’s daughter, the mere metaphor of musical love-childhood largely pales. Skylar Gudasz may not be the real or imagined kin of such folk giants as a Cohen, a Wainwright, or, say Joni Mitchell, but her and her compatriots’ debut forces such family resemblances.

Two Headed Monster, while clocking in at a all-too-brief twenty nine minutes, weaves tales of midnight-lovers and dream-believers, while painting airy, tranced, sonic landscapes. From the opener, which sits you on the steps of a house in Nowheresville (which simultaneously doubles as Anytown, USA), there is both a fantastic unfamiliarity and a comforting mundanity to the scenery that only happens while you dream.

The warm, trademarked organ whir of producer Jeff Crawford continues on the second track, Killing, perhaps the most accessible and infectious of the album. Gudasz leaves behind the mystery and mystique of Hotel Chelsea lobby muzak for a just a moment to surprisingly channel the absolute best of a nineties coffeehouse Sheryl Crow.

Bison re-injects the kind of tension and drama that can only lead to the extrication of someone who “ain’t taking your words as roots no more.” The freedom of her characters’ newfound “fast sets of legs” sprint throughout the remainder of the album amid the Ugly Girls’ (spoiler alert: they’re really boys!) poppy “badda bahs” and William Taylor’s precise tone on his diligent solos. Skylar’s voice only gets deeper and richer as the album winds to the end of its breathless half hour.

The shape-noted O West closes by employing a gifted choir of some of Triangle NC’s finest young guns. As the choristers’ voices rise Casey Toll’s gravitational double bass tethers the ghoulish party to the studio floor. Keep your eye and ears on this young band, such a mature debut can only lead to yet unexplored, dreamier, more expansive vistas.

Rating: 8/10

preaching: Psalms, Hymns, & Spiritual Songs

Sermon text: Ephesians 5:8-20

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

reflecting: Ephesians 5:8-20

This Sunday I have the privilege of continuing the theme that we’ve been hitting on post-Easter. The resurrection is so central to the Christian faith it must have some pretty major implications.

It means that we have a new identity (Ephesians 2:1-10), marked not by our performance or the road that we’ve paved (cause that’s gotta end, and it will definitely end in the grave).

It means that we have a new conception and possibility for community (Ephesians 2:11-21), surprisingly open to different people than the ones we see in the mirror (and the resurrected Jesus tells us through Paul’s writings that this is an occasion for praise and not fear or strife).

And this week we find that we have a new resurrection language (Ephesians 5:8-20): Song. (song?!) That can’t be right, with all the bad stuff going around we need ways to speak that do things, good things, and you’re asking us to make music?

Here’s a parable about what possibilities song has following Jesus’ victory over death in the resurrection. I look forward to seeing you there!

jamming: Mount Moriah live @ Cat's Cradle

jamming: Luego & Jeff Crawford live @ MotorCo

jamming: New York Hymns- Songs for Lent

I don't know if jamming is the right way to necessarily put it, but you should certainly check out this free offering/compilation/devotional project by New York Hymns available for stream/download at NoiseTrade.  It reimagines the Stations of the Cross through newly written and newly arranged tunes.  Some of the stand-outs include buddy Bruce Benedict's meditation (track 5) on Jesus meeting his mother on the road to Golgotha, an unbelievably poignant Bowerbirdsian rumination by Benj Pocta on Christ being stripped of his garments (track 13), and of course Jason Harrod's resurrection song (the final song).  I thoroughly appreciate and commend this project.

review: Arthur Alligood- I Have Not Seen The Wind

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on March 15, 2011.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

-Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

I know nobody wants to be preached at. I know no one wants to be made aware of where they’ve come up short. Where they could do better. Where their vision is blurry, their faith shaky, their knowledge incomplete. Where they took what wasn’t theirs or thought better or worse than was the case. But maybe our best friends are those that know how to preach to us without coming off as self-righteous. They tell us the kind of truth that make us want to be the kind of person that believes it. Maybe the most intimate conversations are just really good sermons. Maybe confessing your own crap is the best homeletical move: vulnerability over fire and/or brimstone. And maybe good sermons can be better poems. Maybe they can even be woven into an album of great songs.

Enter Arthur Alligood: a preacher disguised as a folk singer. At the get-go, Alligood hums the sparse tune “Show Some Heart,” pleading earnestly with the listener to let down some walls, unlock some doors, and follow some of those suppressed dreams. He might as well have written this tune with a busted guitar over late-night drinks with Bill Mallonee.

He hauls the next several songs over Wallflowers dirt roads, all chugging percussion and whining steel. Just as I Have Not Seen the Wind starts really moving with Nashvillian adroitness, Alligood crashes with the confessional “Piece Me Together.” And in so doing, he empties any pretention that he knows exactly where he’s going.

Alligood re-mounts his whistle-stop soapbox on “Gavel”: the sweetest, most Townes Van Zandt-ian polemic against hypocrisy and shallow judgmentalism I’ve ever heard. Instead of harping on the sodden now, or looking for a clean-slated future, he asks us to remember the past when we “were better as a criminal begging for a second chance.”

The title track, for me, actually surpasses Alligood’s own humbly-opinioned tune for best-written song on the album. Alligood grafts an image from the Bible into an allusive and illustrative prayer. The small, humble situatedness that Alligood shares with Christiana Rossetti and sings like Josh Ritter is a powerful centerpiece, a saw dust altar call, of sorts, to the type of meekness that shall inherit the earth.

Rating: 8.4/10

review: luz- Light Among Other Things

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on March 14, 2011.

In just under 32 minutes, Charlotte, NC’s luz (formatted that way) manages to bring you on a bumpy sonic ride of fear, faith, and vulnerability. The goal of this project, seemingly, from a band with such a name, is to illuminate via lyric and musical texture what it means to move from dark to light; despair and disrepair to hope and wholeness. Interspersed with screeching atmospheric guitar and affective ambient noise, the EP is an offering from an honest young artist to do just this.

Stephen Morrison strives to express and discover what it means to have “religion” and “try believing.” The record’s opener, “Nobody Knows My Name,” reads as a hopeful lament. The blues: frustrated with stuck-ness, fearful of the pain that change might involve, but hopeful for that better future. There’s always a tinge of hope in the blues.

“Try Believing” continues this narrative, starts to employing more of the light (than the “other things”) in order to dream of possibilities, and to struggle to find an apt “object for affection.“ The future again proves simultaneously hopeful and dreadful. Kids. Family. Fulfillment. Security. In the immediate present: none of this, and no way to get there. This is an achingly practical take on what it means to believe. To believe that these will come about, to not despair in how long they take to form, and to not force the issue in the meanwhile. The substance of the belief we’re being invited into being “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The next few tracks shed but more glow on the danger of living this way, leaving behind. “What I Leave” and “Come On Honey” weave eerie vocal harmonies and aggressive guitar sections to form a tapestry of regret-tinged remembrance and forward-moving closure.

Finally, “Effect” (which could have come right off of For Emma, Forever Ago), uses Bon Iver’s sprawling falsetto to close the journey. This is perhaps the short album’s pinnacle, where the band most artfully combines all the threads its been pulling, with the effect of exposing the false and pursuing “new ways to get born.”

Rating: 6.7/10

jamming: Jessica Long & Wind & Willow live @ Motorco

jamming: Floating Action, Schooner, & the Tomahawks live @ Kings Barcade

jamming: Ben Sollee live @ Casbah

Read the Description from the Independent.

jamming: Brett Harris live at Fullsteam Brewery

jamming: Christmas Nights performed live on NBC17

jamming: Top Ten for 2010

Written for The Blue Indian, 22 December 2010.

10. Women and Country- Jakob Dylan

Wallflowers’ front and legendary folk offspring continued to tick off his list of Hall of Fame producers this year.  With the help of T Bone Burnett behind the board and Kelly Hogan and Neko Case in the background, he manages to craft a set typically textured and heart-rung ballads that would as easily soundtrack a John Steinbeck novel as they would a Nashville barroom.

9. Here’s to Taking It Easy- Phosphorescent

I caught onto this one pretty late, but am glad I did.  A cross between Bonny “Prince” Billy’s winsome folk and Band of Horses alt-whine, Matt Houck turns in an LP without any gloss or accoutrement, just the basics.  The pedal steel on tracks like “Heaven Sittin’ Down” complement his rambling vocals, and the sparse harmonious tracks like “Nothin Was Stolen” harken to Bon Iver at his de-Autotuned finest.

8. Man of Few Words- Brett Harris

From the first few strums on opener “I Found Out” to the final bluish self-pity on “Over and Over,” Man of Few Words offers a plentitude of neo-Brit-pop nostalgia.  You only get this type of music when it seeps out of the pores of someone so reared on McCartney and Costello, that even “safer” alt-country breaks (“Unspoken”) bear the infectious melodies, showmanship, and profundity of such predecessors. 

7. Cut Loose- The Tomahawks

Born of a songwriting backlog, Cut Loose is no haphazard dustpan of songs.  Instead you find a complete and well-ordered mix of classic sounds and subjects repackaged by one of the most talented collectives (in every sense of the word) in one of the most overlooked music scenes (Raleigh-Durham-Carrboro).  Moments like the first few seconds on “Hearts” or the sweeping Wilco-esque solo on Reason or Rhyme speak of more and better to come for this posse.

6. All Alone in an Empty House- Lost in the Trees

Orchestral folk music: perhaps the sub-genre with the highest potential for pretension.  Instead, Ari Picker brilliantly conducts an album with so much emotion and vulnerability, anger, strife, memory, and hope that to patently discard it on those grounds discard it would be a huge mistake.  My favorite tracks “Song For The Painter,” “Love on My Side,” and “A Room Were Your Paintings Hang,” display a deft self-awareness without being self-absorbed.  What you get is a hybrid of Conor Oberst and Andrew Bird:  screamingly honest and urgent, though playful, complex, and artistic.

5. The Suburbs- Arcade Fire 

The “biggest indie album of the year” that got everyone questioning what that really means anymore anyway, got me wondering something else.  Just when exactly did Arcade Fire become the heir apparent to Radiohead and U2?  It wasn’t during Funeral.  Not quite during the darkly topical Neon Bible.  Surprisingly, it took a potentially painful concept album to get there.  I wasn’t too interested in a heavy-handed hipster dirge to all things suburban, but that’s not what I got.  Instead Butler and Co. put together a complex jeremiad of a spent and sometimes misspent youth. 

4. Up From Below- Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

The superlative for Weirdest Cult/Traveling Musical Gypsy Circus goes to these guys.  They also wrap up the companion superlative for Least Likely Band to Pull Down Constant Car and NFL Commercial Licensing.  From start to finish this album is my favorite kind of trip.

3. Wild Hunt/Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird- The Tallest Man on Earth

A powder-keg of lyrical intensity, Kristian Matsson chimes in with two solid albums.  The latter EP, shows no drop-off from the brilliant early year full-length.  Tracks like “Kids on the Run” or “Like a Wheel” jerk at your tear ducts, while anthemic “The Dreamer” and “King of Spain” buoy those blues. To date all of the cover art matches, and his songwriting is so strong that you get the feeling that these albums come easy, that he could do this output every year for the rest of his life and us listeners would be better for it.  

2. Libraries- The Love Language

Part of a powerful triumvirate of national albums put out this year by Merge Records (including She & Him and Arcade Fire).  Stu McLamb steps up his low-fi, soul-biting swagger from the eponymous debut on this crushing sophomore effort.  My faves include playful yet pensive “Summer Dust,” slide guitar licked “This Blood Is Our Own,” and the less-than-Violent Femmed “Heart To Tell.”

1. Sigh No More- Mumford & Sons

I don’t know of anyone that I’ve recommended this album to this year that hasn’t been wooed by the band’s earnest and powerful brit-grass tunes.  From the opening harmonies which harken Fleet Foxes at their best, to “The Cave’s” topsy-turvy image of reality, to the hopeful closer’s assurance of the “time with no more tears,” Marcus Mumford and Co. set out not only to make a brilliant and cohesive musical album, but to craft an inventive vision and definition of faith, hope, and love.  Oh, and there’s banjo too.

I dug these too (in alpha order):  The Black Keys; Broken Bells; Carolina Chocolate Drops; S. Carey; Johnny Cash; Justin Townes Earle; Gayngs; Ray LaMontagne; Luego; Mandolin Orange; Sandra McCracken; Megafaun; Josh Moore; Morning Benders; The Old Ceremony; Josh Ritter; She & Him; Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore; Spoon; Sufjan Stevens; Angus & Julia Stone; Sharon Van Etten; Derek Webb.

jamming: Gathering Music: Hymn Sing and Album Release live @ Reality Center

jamming:The Old Ceremony & The Tomahawks live at Motorco

review: The Tomahawks- Cut Loose

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on November 2, 2010.

From the soil beneath your feet to the sky above your head, opening track "Dear Mary” sets the tone for the Tomahawks’ expansive debut full-length record. What follows reads like a vintage-rock Farmers’ Almanac, telling stories of changes in mind and season; twists of time and tumult of heart. Said best, “If time can tear the concrete apart, imagine what it does to your heart.”

Second track, “Sunrise,” continues the theses, and serves as a disarmament. Frontman Nick Jaeger empties a suitcase of influences and allusions on the table: Son of a Preacher Man, Fortunate Sons and with Silver Spoon in tow, only missing a cat and a cradle. From the omnipresent ghosts of rock past, Neil Young and Creedance, to current landscapers, Wilco and My Morning Jacket, these unabashed nods allow the band to push onward, to “cut loose” from the company their sound keeps. So Jaeger continues to tell a hopeful story of a dimestore prodigal and like the rest of the album, his honest writing offers the reader faded snapshots, textured and as clear as they need to be. These “mid-fi” rhapsodies echo the album’s smooth but sometimes slurred production.

“Hearts” is a pounding, adventurous rollick. Jaeger’s grouped vocals allow him to wear his heart on his sleeve with the swagger of the kerchief that adorns his neck at the band’s live shows. Beyond the great writing though, this is in a lot of ways a guitar record. Jaeger comes off less as the son of a preacherman and more the son of a luthier.  "A Moment to be Free’s” second half is my favorite portion of the whole album: part sweet harmony, part A Ghost is Born ax battle, building tension, tearing it down and then bleeding into the Comment-styled (Kicking Television) "Reason And Rhyme" to follow.

Benefiting from the indefinite hiatus of Chapel Hill mainstay Max Indian (which featured many of the album talented players), the Tomahawks seem poised to continue to develop their bouncy piano, infectious neon-soaked sing-a-longs, howling organ, and controlled shreds.  Cut Loose is certainly one of my very favorite releases of a year that is rapidly coming to a close.

Rating: 9/10