“How long will you turn your face away?”
Lamentations, the latest release from forward-thinking music collective Bifrost Arts, encourages Christians to make room in their worship for lament and sadness, and it gives what it encourages. Few things could be a better balm for the modern church.
Wistful and fierce, Deep Sea Diver’s SECRETS submits the strength of craft to the demands of feeling to yield an exquisitely well-balanced and self-controlled musical recollection of the (sometimes broken) promises of intimacy.
In an interview with the Stranger, lead singer and guitarist Jessica Dobson expressed how she wanted to push her boundaries on SECRETS:
Global annihilation. Epistemology. Belief. Hope for the future. No, we’re not talking about a Bible conference on eschatology. We’re talking about the latest summer blockbuster from Disney. Tomorrowland is certainly similar to most summer blockbusters. It has action, explosions, adventure, suspense, and all the other things you would expect. But it also has a defined, at times even heavy-handed, moral riptide that has been generating some unusual conversations.
I use moral somewhat loosely, however. This is the Disney version of morality. And it has almost nothing at all to do with religion, narrowly defined. Strangely enough, in a movie this preachy, there isn’t even a single mention of Christians. Or a religious believer of any kind, really. Even in the all-inclusive, ham-fisted, politically correct finale montage, not one religious person is included as a “dreamer.” I guess the brave new world of the dreamers is peculiarly free of religion. Or is it?
And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:11-12; KJV)
In its best moments, Monarch, by Zach Winters, effortlessly creates silence. That music can create silence is one of many paradoxes you are going to have to get used to if you want to get to know this record. In the violence and foment of our instantaneous age, there are few things more alien than quality silence and intentional waiting. In all the hot noise of our weird, wired, wide, webbed world—noise which we often mistake for information and connectedness—our inner ears have become accustomed to ignoring the still small voice of God.
The Bad Plus, the Minnesotan progressive jazz trio, just performed in Atlanta for the first time in eleven years,1 and I can tell you it was worth the wait.
My friend Rusty and I arrived in Little Five Points around 7:10 pm, only twenty minutes before the show was supposed to begin. We hadn’t eaten before we got our tickets, but we were prepared to wait until after the show to get food. The ticket office lady at the Variety Playhouse told us there was no reason to rush. Apparently very few people had shown up yet.
First, I want to be honest. I have never liked Mumford & Sons. I wish I could tell you that without sounding pretentious. It’s not because I’m too hipster for the hipsters. There are a number of reasons why their music rubs me the wrong way: the guy’s impassioned “English Dave Matthews” voice annoys me. And I feel like all of their songs sound the same: How many times can you listen to the same banjo arpeggiating, kick drum stroking, guitar hyper-strumming, generic lyric moaning redundancy? I really don’t care how well it’s produced or how polished it has become. It just doesn’t hold my interest. Mumford & Sons is to indie folk what Jack Johnson is to surf pop. And if you like both of these music-by-numbers artists, well, I’m sorry—you probably also think Thomas Kinkade beats out Rembrandt as the “painter of light.”
Redundant consistency has been the mainstay of pop movements for quite some time. But that isn’t what really irks me about Mumford & Sons. What annoys me is that Mumford & Sons and many of the other mainstreaming “indie” bands seem to be selling sincerity without being sincere. And people buy it because it looks sincere. The popularity of Mumford & Sons and bands like them originates from the fact that the general population is tired of cynicism and the ironic distance. But I hate to see what will happen to people when they find out that yet another “authentic” voice turns out to be nothing more than a hollow receptacle for their own longings.
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