Native Tongue

Today Switchfoot are back from their (thankfully, in hindsight, hilariously short) hiatus with their eleventh full album, Native Tongue. I was treated to an advance preview as a volunteer music reviewer a couple of months ago, so I wanted to offer my personal review in addition to the official review I had published:

Put aside any preconceived ideas about what Switchfoot are about, or you will miss the point.

They’ve been around long enough they don’t have anything to prove to anyone.

Continuing what they started on ‘Where The Light Shines Through’ but taking it to new levels, this is a playful, creative, and highly accomplished exploration of sound. Every Switchfoot album is distinct in style, but this one promised a sonically disparate collection of songs and it certainly delivers! Influences on show span Queen, The Beatles, Coldplay and the White Stripes, the music of the Pacific islands, Celtic fringes and southern Africa, gospel, hair rock, hiphop, EDM and synth-rock, alongside styles they’ve already made fully their own, and full-on guitar solos nestle amongst layers of brass and strings. With WTLST they had experimented with different styles a little, let their influences show through here and there, and finally begun to show off their solo and improvisational skills a little, something they do effortlessly live but had always held back in the studio. But this takes that creative and experimental approach up a gear or two.

So let’s go:

The songs

The massive Let It Happen erupts euphorically over the soul in dramatic fashion. On the whole, the feel evokes 90s Britpop (something akin to The Verve); this is my era, my sound, and the passion it oozes brings me to tears of pleasure every time. And yet, they have worked into it a full-on Queen-esque solo!! I think they stole Brian May. Jon’s vocals are stunningly powerful as he voices our fears and anxieties yet entreats us to embrace the chaos and live in the now, as, paraphrasing Jesus, worrying about the future will not change it. This song has arrived in my life with perfect timing, the message exactly what I need as I feel myself walking into a new year that is going to shake my whole world up in many ways.

Let It Happen is followed by the similarly dramatic, infectious, drum-driven title track. Its message of remembering our origins in childlike love and acceptance is echoed by the tribal feel of the sound. The danceable beat gives way unexpectedly to a quietly moody outro, evoking the best of their b-side work. The message is good, but here is my concern – don’t we all think we are motivated by love? None of us identify as ‘the haters’. We just differ in our views of love. And when someone seems to be attacking your view of love, you get defensive, hence our divisions. Telling us to love is not sufficient; we need to learn to listen across those divides to understand the love position of The Other somehow… I have to listen in context of what I have heard Switchfoot speak about more explicitly about listening to one another across our divides and working from our common ground to fully understand what they mean here. It’s all too easy to simply extol the virtues of being nice to those we come into contact with, whilst shying away from politics because it is difficult, thus allowing the terrible things happening in our world go ahead unchallenged. Taken alone, I fear this song could reinforce that idea, but in context of Switchfoot’s example of trying to listen to and understand The Other before jumping in with our own views, I know it’s much bigger.

Next we reach the beating heart of the album – the beautiful, soulful, spiritual All I Need. The vocals here are gorgeous, and there is a bit of a Celtic feel to the melody (though not the sound, which is big-production Switchfoot). Developing the theme of what really matters in life previously explored in If The House Burns Down Tonight, the song forms the unifying thesis of the album around which the other songs seem to hang. Its central heart-on-sleeve question feels exposed and vulnerable.

After this, the edgy, bass-driven hiphop of Voices changes up the sound again. It explores anxiety, especially in a world with lots of information and opinions jostling for our attention, and how we are all so full of ‘voices’ of our own on the inside too, all our doubts and insecurities that can so fill our heads when our minds are not well. I will be honest, though I like it enough, this track low-level irritates me – but there has been at least one on every album and to a greater or lesser extent I always get over it*! I spent a while trying to think what it reminds me of, and eventually hit on it – Justin Timberlake!! Sorry. 😀 But the backing harmonies are lovely, and the use of a ticking clock sound at one point is spot on, and soundwise it does connect back to earlier work, most notably parts of Vice Verses. The song was released back in November, and the music video is a work of art that adds so much to the song itself, really bringing all its angst to the fore and lifting the music. It manages to be poignant, creepy and humorous all at once, and is really visually creative.

Dig New Streams sounds uncannily like it escaped from the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s** and somehow found its way to Switchfoot, quirky, trippy, and packed with awesome riffs, solos and changes of pace and time. It’s so accurate it made me laugh out loud in amazement that they could have pulled this off! I need to live with these lyrics a little more, but I hear Jesus again, this time throwing a lifeline to those hurt by our religion, and it’s certainly the most original of the album.

Joy Invincible’s soft vocals are luscious. This track has an electronic vibe, a huge sonic soundscape that would fill a club, and nice guitarwork under the ending. It’s very moving, and I would love to know the back story.

It leads nicely into the raw and passionate Prodigal Soul. A raw, acoustic opening becomes full band plus strings; it feels vulnerable, and a bit Coldplay, as Jon finds himself identifying with the homecoming son of Jesus’ famous parable.

Next stop on this musical mystery tour is the full-on EDM of The Hardest Art, blending elements of 80s electronica with bang-up-to-date synth rock – and do I detect a touch of Abba?! Guest vocalist Kaela Sinclair takes the second verse, and for just a moment as their voices join together in a gorgeous acoustic interlude there are echoes of Jon’s solo work. The repeated refrain ‘the hardest art is love is surrender is love is the hardest art’ is stirringly anthemic and I cannot help singing it out. And then, something uniquely precious to my ears – the track closes with a touch of soaring guitar that sounds remarkably like Stu G (think the close of Delirious?’s Obsession)! I have goosebumps…

The deliciously laid-back, piano dominated Wonderful Feeling comes next, another track strongly influenced by The Beatles, particularly with its unconventional chord progressions and build up. Jon’s vocals are incredible once again, as again he demonstrates seemingly effortless vocal control, moving back and forth between forceful expression and pretty falsetto, and we are also given another guitar solo, this time more in the relaxed style of George Harrison.

And then another twist, as the unexpected, heavy, headbanging riff of Take My Fire crashes in. Jon’s voice now sounds classic-rock rugged, and though you can tell Hendrix isn’t far away, this is definitely born of the White Stripes’ school of 21st-century rock. The bluesy feel and spiritual theme also made me think of Verra Cruz, another of my favourite bands but too little known to be an influence.

All jangling guitars and lush harmonies in 6/8, The Strength To Let Go has a Celtic, folky thing going on again, but again this is big-production, big-sound CCM. By the time we reach the heartfelt ‘I am lightning and You are the ground!’ it really feels like a Rend Collective classic! But we are treated to a little ‘ha!’ of Jon’s early on, which I couldn’t help but smile on hearing.

Oxygen is a vulnerable and gentle soft rock ballad featuring slide guitar. It’s left me wondering where such a powerful break up song has come from, especially as it so accurately captures the unreal sensation of losing something (or someone) you had come to depend on, but it’s a tear jerker that is going to hold close folks going through loss and break up.

We’re Gonna Be Alright follows, blending global musical influences and an immensely fun bass riff in a similar vein to When Was The Last Time (minus the arcade game midi), and definitely recalling Michael Franti both in style and content. Appropriately for a piece about reassurance, the vocals have the intimate quality of a father whispering into the ear of a child. You can’t help but feel it. I hope this makes it into their live sets; I can see it already, everyone clapping along and singing the chorus together.

You’re The One I Want closes this eclectic album with a simple piano and cello love song; it feels like it connects right back to The Legend Of Chin somehow even in the vocal style, but now everything has grown up – a resolution of the early relationship angst, a certainty, a maturity of understanding, and the grungy vocals of a song like You have mellowed into this soft warmth.

The production throughout Native Tongue is stunning, the sound layered and full, every element carefully placed, and it sounds made for vinyl.

My perspective

I think after three albums now I can finally state that Jon’s writing style has changed; prior to this I would not want to have called a change where he could merely have been experimenting with something different, especially without any sort of timeline given for The Wonderlands songs, many of which are typically deeply layered, poetic and philosophical in keeping with Jon’s previous and well known style. But that aside, we’ve seen very little of that since Vice Verses now, and I doubt we’re in for any more gravitational entropy waves. There’s still depth to his themes, and his intellect and prophetic gift are still in evidence, but his writing is so much simpler, more straight-up, and his focus has shifted to rhyme and to creating anthems a crowd can sing out together. Native Tongue, like Fading West and WTLST, is dominated by the strongly-rhyming, hiphop-influenced songwriting that has characterised much of his recent work.

It’s very much a Christian album, the story of a ‘prodigal soul’ finding home in the love of God. Themes from the Gospels shine through strongly, as does the real-life journey of an artist who has spent 20 years wrestling with a sense of being far from home and out of place finally discovering home, both spiritually and in a very earthly sense with his own family. In this respect it feels very introspective and focussed on close personal relationships with family and God, rather than looking outwards to the wider context of our lives in the world.

It’s also their least angsty album to date, lacking their usual lyrical bite, which in such truly angsty times I find a bit hard to swallow. There’s much that will appeal to the American church here, and little to challenge it. With no space given for lament or any encouragement to take a stand it’s not speaking to the current climate for me, but perhaps I haven’t arrived yet myself? Or perhaps it simply underlines the difference between my truth-to-power approach and Switchfoot’s approach of bringing people together into a safe space, both of which are valid and needed in these times.

Perhaps there’s no way back from here and this sense of home to the kind of songwriting that wrestles with the depths – but nor do I wish it on Jon, as I know he’s written those angstier songs from painful experience and he sounds like being in a good place now. That genuinely gives me joy. The songs are clearly written from the heart and I would rather they continue to do that than to write the sort of songs I would have them write. They don’t owe me anything! And these lyrics will doubtless push and challenge me in new ways and find different parts of my life to embed in, just as Let It Happen is doing already.

But they are home. It’s very much a celebration of that.

And it’s all about the music; they certainly can’t be accused of stagnation or of selling themselves short in any way, they’ve thrown it all in there. The range of styles is going to divide opinion, but there’s little doubt it’s a musical masterpiece. In my ‘official’ review I rated it 9/10; this is because although I truly mean that, and it’s perfectly produced (without being overdone, which they’ve been guilty of at times in the past), the range of styles is going to be too broad to appeal to everyone. And it doesn’t have so much in the way of the thought-provoking lyrics I fell in love with Switchfoot for, so I can’t see it being an album I personally live and breathe, that becomes a part of me and helps me engage with the world in the same way as most of their work to date.

For me, it feels a little like listening to the Fiction Family album rather than Switchfoot (though I must emphasise that the sound is still very much Switchfoot not Fiction Family!) – even aside from the fact that that’s previously been Jon’s outlet for his Beatlesier side, it’s musically brilliant but I don’t connect so deeply with most of the lyrics, and you just don’t know what they’re going to pull out next, it’s full of surprises! I feel like that’s where it will sit for me, being enjoyed obsessively when I’m in the right frame of mind for something a bit eclectic as with Fiction Family, rather than being chewed over regularly and meditated upon like a typical Switchfoot album. Because of this I’ve found it hard to rate relative to their other albums. I think I’d say I like it better than Fading West (though that one has such a feel-good sunshiney vibe it probably has the highest play!), though quite a bit less than WTLST, which gave me favourite song after favourite song and, though had its evident influences, simply sounded like Switchfoot showing their own versatility.

I am wowed by their soloing on this album – but they do so here largely in the style of other artists. So whilst they reveal their skills to an impressive extent, we still haven’t had much from the studio of Jon and Drew’s own original mighty improvisational solo styles, which so captivate us live. They remain an elusive treat for those of us who get to see them on stage! But they leave you in no doubt here of their capability. Go see them live if you get the chance!

Bringing in very strong elements of other artists’ sounds also runs the risk for me of triggering my low replay tolerance for many of these other artists, who I can enjoy from time to time in small doses but who will quickly begin to grate on my nerves if I play them too much. Switchfoot have never yet made anything that doesn’t become irritating on repeat for me, and that’s unique, but that has possibly relied on them sounding entirely like themselves.

That said, however many elements they have borrowed from other artists, it’s still very much Switchfoot. Every track has its roots in earlier material somewhere I can trace it back to, and however diverse these songs are they certainly don’t feel disconnected from previous albums. Nor do the tracks feel disconnected from each other. Diverse they may be, but it feels as deliberately crafted as I know it was, every track standing in sharp contrast to its neighbours. And though the sound changes constantly, the lyrical themes are very consistent, perhaps more so than ever, which considering Switchfoot have always crafted albums around strong themes is impressive.

And it really is a joy; I’m very proud of them and glad they’ve finally made this collection, something they’ve hinted at doing for some time now. It’s great to hear what they have been capable of all along. It’s a homecoming.

 

*It’s happening already; M came home the other night to find me playing it loud and stomping round the kitchen to it, so I think it’s winning! 😀

**M says Abbey Road. He is quite correct. 😀 😀

 

Implicit worship

Fake News Of The Week amongst the Switchfam was this satirical article from the Babylon Bee, ‘Switchfoot release implicit worship album’.

It provoked mixed reactions – but I have to admit, I laugh-snorted!  The article does have a dig at Jon’s writing style – it’s fair enough, except that he’s a lot more versatile and varied than is implied – but the classier dig is at the likes of me, who actually really get a lot out of that sort of songwriting. It’s bang on, and a proper ‘ouch!’.

The piece actually nailed so much of what I love about Switchfoot. And that got me thinking, why is that? I’m passionate about worship, yet this article shows me that ‘implicit worship’ is something I’m really behind. ‘Implicit worship’ sounds like a bad thing. Shouldn’t our worship be explicit? Shouldn’t we be saying it like we mean it? Are we not..? Here’s where my thoughts led me:

Firstly, I think we are. Being explicit is good and there’s a place for that, and you’ll find it within Switchfoot’s repertoire as well as in my own life.

But worship is more than singing praise songs. Worship is whole life. It would quickly become dry and meaningless if all we did were state our praise in words, especially in words that had been said many times before to the point of cliche, just as we do not live our personal relationships entirely through love songs. Worship cannot be words alone. Music helps it to stir our emotions, but that in itself is not enough. Worship must touch our whole lives, turn around our entire way of life. We need to be able to bring the whole of life and experience to God, engage with God there, allow ourselves to be challenged and changed and reshaped and motivated to act, and then go out and live it in God’s general direction. Simply singing ‘I love You Jesus’ songs has its place, but will not fulfil that whole purpose. Those songs I will use in church when we all need to be able to sing something simple together, and in moments when that is exactly what I need to express, but are not the sorts of songs I carry with me day to day, that help me work out how to be a better follower of Jesus in the everyday situations I find myself facing. They are not the songs that stretch and broaden my understanding and deepen my awe of God. For me, Switchfoot’s music takes me to those deeper places, the places that help me wrestle life and faith together and work through how to walk it out in the world I’m living in.

Implicit worship. Worship that involves the trajectory of my life, not merely my words. It’s precisely why someone like myself will connect more with songs of the sort the article pokes fun at, such as Stars, than with their more straightforwardly ‘explicit’ material, like new single You Found Me. They are the songs that go deep in my life, that I walk with over the years, that make me think, and change me, slowly, into something a little more Christlike, as they help me figure out what a faithful response to the world I live in might look like. Switchfoot’s music won’t do that for everyone, if it’s not to your taste or the way you think, but it does for many of us who connect with it.

And music has a purpose beyond explicit praise too, even for Christians believe it or not. And that’s an important factor to understanding the Foremans’ ethos. Switchfoot’s aim is not to be a church worship band. They are artists, making the music that expresses what is on their hearts, purely for the sake of that authentic expression. Music has value in itself. Its value is not just in ‘worship’ music. That is no higher or more spiritual than any other music. Music helps us to make sense of the big stuff, where we can turn with the things we don’t understand. Where we can experience feeling, and mystery, and wonder. That is as important to the Christian journey as singing praise songs, if not more so, and God, and good, can be found in any kind of music or art, labelled ‘Christian’ or otherwise. There is more to the human existence to experience and express than just the religious bits, and God wants to be involved in it all. We are made creative beings in God’s image, so simply using our creative capacity for any artistic expression is itself a godly act. God does not need to be excluded if we choose to use that art to express say our romantic feelings for another person or our frustration with politics or struggles with depression for example. God is present. And in music we can explore how to handle those situations faithfully. That too is worship, lived out.

So ‘implicit worship’ need not be a negative. It’s not about being ashamed or embarrassed of Jesus. Switchfoot are more than happy to speak openly about their faith and to publicly call themselves Christians, as am I. If we couldn’t bring ourselves to talk openly about Jesus at all we’d certainly have a problem. So too if I thought Switchfoot were trying to hide their faith to gain popularity amongst non-Christians. But that’s not their game. Theirs is just a different approach to both music and to worship than that of a ‘worship band’. Their calling is to make honest music. ‘Worship’ is not explicitly their aim, any more than it is mine when I go to work. Yet every day on my way to the office I’m praying for God to use me and my work that day. I’m not about to start a praise party in the office, and neither should we expect it of Switchfoot just because music is involved, but it is all worship nonetheless.

I don’t want my worship to be limited to the occasions I am singing praise songs. I want my whole life to imply worship. And long may there be music in our lives that moves us to live that way!

2015 – An intense year

2015 was a crazy year for me; I’ve never known a year so packed or so intense in my life! There’s been some bad-intense moments, but overwhelmingly more good-intense experiences. I’m left feeling pretty humbled by it all.

Life in general

It began particularly intense for my husband; 3 major deadlines in the first 3 weeks of the year (requiring a lot of all-nighters to finish it all), and culminating in a two week trip away from home to the USA for a conference and visit to his relatives, and a first experience of properly cold temperatures and American snow. And so the year continued from there!

We’ve been away a lot; my work has taken me away from home more than ever before, with 10 trips to London alone for meetings and climate rallies, plus visits to Bradford and Sheffield to lead workshops, a training weekend in Derbyshire, and several festivals. We went to three weddings, and our band managed to meet up eight times for performances and recording sessions, we attended a very geeky reunion weekend for our old university, and visited family in different parts of the country a few times too, during which we were introduced to three new ‘fur baby’ relatives.

And then there were the two holidays of a lifetime; the second, a trip to the incredibly beautiful Isles of Scilly with my family, and the first, following Switchfoot’s European tour and taking time during our travels to visit friends and family in London, Edinburgh, and Freiburg as well as some quality time exploring European cities together. Both adventures have left us with the most precious memories of happy times together. And we’ve seen some incredible wildlife too; cranes, storks, black woodpeckers, sunfish, dolphins, starfish, sea urchins, sea anemones, seals… amazing.

We’ve had a lot of visitors when we have been home; now we live in a nice part of the country a lot more of our friends and family have been keen to visit, and we’ve been busy giving tours of the local sights. There have been a fair few daytrips just as a household too, including some long cycle rides, hikes on the moors, a fossil hunting expedition (in which M actually found a dinosaur bone), a pirate festival, and trips to the beach. I’ve done a lot more sea swimming than usual; it usually takes a lot to get me in the sea but one day in the autumn the sea was so lovely I spent over an hour swimming!

The little time we have had at home, to ourselves, we’ve spent trying to redecorate our whole house, which has obviously not got all that far given how little time we’ve been able to give to the DIY project! But we’ve learnt to put up wallpaper, and crammed in time for a little housewarming party too once we got the worst of the DIY out the way.

So that’s what my life was like on the whole last year; this is how things panned out with my faith, politics, poetry and fandom:

Faith

Two recurring themes of this year in my relationship with God have been grace, and death as part of the resurrection process. This was a really significant year for me as it was the year I could finally celebrate having been ‘alive for half my life’. I’d been thinking about it a lot as the anniversary approached, and these lessons God has been teaching me seemed really fitting; a time to refocus on all I have been given, both in having my life saved in the first place, half my life ago, and all that I have been given since, and then to question what happens next in this process of being reborn, recreated and resurrected.

Grace has impacted me in so many ways in the past year, and I’ve encountered it from so many people as well as supremely from Godself. I’ve posted here already about the profound grace experience I encountered through my meetings with Jon Foreman whilst following Switchfoot on tour last spring, and also about a very different grace experience, which came about as the result of what felt, to me at least, a real epic fail, but which opened me up to a fresh sense of God’s love for me and my absolute dependence on that Love for strength, goodness and second chances. But I’ve also experienced a huge amount of grace from others through my failures, struggles with health and work, and my political activity; my husband has met all of this with forgiveness, love, patience and humour, and my friends, family and colleagues have been so amazingly supportive, offering prayer, sympathy and practical support over and over again, regardless of whether or not they’ve agreed with me. I feel deeply humbled by it all.

The intimate connection between death and resurrection has been on my mind a lot over the year. It began, logically enough, at Easter, as I remembered again how in Christ death itself died to bring life to us all through the resurrection. But I am a Jon Foreman fan; this past year he has seeded my thought life with so many new songs exploring life, death and resurrection, as well as the older songs that had accompanied my musings over Easter. As I spent the year looking back to the day one version of myself died and a new me came alive, and forward to the future, a day-to-day process of learning to die little by little to myself and live more fully the life I was made for to play my part in bringing in the Kingdom of God, it has been extremely powerful to share the journey with these songs. There have been some beautiful contemplative moments, experiencing God close by in still moments in festivals and out in nature. And I’ve seen more answers to prayers, big and small, than I can possibly count, everything from miraculous healings of people we’ve prayed for at church to good weather when I’ve needed it for travels and work. God is good.

Politics

Politically, this past year has been a battle, and it has taken me beyond what I’ve been able to handle – which in itself has meant depending more and more on grace, and sacrificing a little more of myself to allow more life in, but it has also stretched me to breaking point. I spend a lot of time campaigning for social justice and environmental protection, both with two of my ‘jobs’, and in my personal life, but this year has been very tough, with the election, the Paris climate summit, and the fall-out of both to deal with. It has felt like we’ve had to push extremely hard just to hold our ground, and at times it’s felt like things are heading in a backwards direction instead as poverty, inequality and xenophobia have risen, and climate change and nature protection measures have been in most cases cut, just when we need to be becoming more internationally cooperative, working more actively for peace, and pushing hard for real cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and a halt to species losses. So we’ve been working hard. And unfortunately I’ve felt extremely isolated in it all, working alone from home most of the time, and not having a good network of activist friends living nearby to rely on for help and solidarity.

For the positives – I’ve had a few different chances to speak and lead workshops this past year, including taking part in my first panel event on faith and the environment, I went on my first ever pride march, had wonderful encouraging visits to other activist groups, particularly with SPEAK, which reminded me I’m not alone and that good things are happening, and went to some really inspiring events, including Friends of the Earth’s Basecamp training weekend/ minifestival. And since it has been so hard to move things in conventional ways, I’ve turned to non-violent direct action; firstly supporting a fairly low-key prayer rally and banner drop in the Church of England synod meeting calling on the Church to disinvest from fossil fuels for the sake of those we should be showing love towards, and secondly, whitewashing and ‘rebranding’ the Department for Energy and Climate Change to expose the deadly policy changes taking place behind all the government’s talk on climate. And both went about as well as we could have hoped, and have received a lot of support. I just hope they lead to meaningful change…

Poetry

I haven’t written a lot of poetry this past year; however, I have managed to write, and actually finish, four songs, which is pretty amazing for me. It was mainly a year for the music; my band worked hard to release a new Christmas album at the end of the year, so we had a lot of band meetups and recording sessions to get it done. We also performed at two small festivals and two weddings, which was nice. In the process I have begun to learn to sing out loud, performing with a microphone, singing a duet with M, and finally recording a lead vocal! And improbably, despite our disorganisation, we did get the album out on time, and it’s quite fun!

Fandom

Wow this really has been a year of change in my life as a music fan. Although I’d largely given in to the inevitability of becoming a megafan years back, even up to the end of 2014 I was still fighting myself over it to some extent, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t an integral part of me. After spending some time fasting from all things Jon Foreman at the end of the year, it became clear to me that trying to detach myself too far from my fandom was actually unhealthy, and that I was fighting against my own self. I decided that whilst an occasional short ‘fast’ could be a good thing to stop me becoming too obsessed or unhealthily dependent, on the whole it was far better for me to give in to it completely, stop fighting myself and just become all that it can make me. And it has been an incredible ride!

As well as finding out just how much I can be changed for the better through it, I’ve also been learning what it is to really be a fan; that an artist-fan relationship is not the one-way, purely commercial process that I had previously thought it to be, but that it truly is a two-way relationship, that artists need our support in so many ways, including hearing from us personally.

So. I joined a couple of online fan forums to meet fellow fans. I took the chance to follow Switchfoot on tour around Europe back in the spring. I got tickets for five shows, plus all the buses, trains and hostels that involved to make it all possible. And I made some fan art to take along to show the band, a t-shirt and four banners, plus a couple of letters. And it worked out so incredibly, beautifully well! I made some great new friends, had some wonderful times with M and friends, and finally felt I’d made the connection with Jon and the rest of the band that I’d missed making all these years. I’m still even now getting the happiest flashbacks to it all that make my heart skip a beat or two, it’s hard to get my head around. It even spilled over a little to my relationships with other artists; if I’d been a bad fan to Switchfoot in the past I’d been a worse fan to band #2, Delirious. But last year I also finally got a message of appreciation through to the band’s Stu and Stew too, which helped heal some of those old regrets too.

And the intensity of the last year of fandom did not end when I returned home from that tour either; all last year Jon Foreman was releasing a series of EPs collectively called The Wonderlands (and ended the year by giving us a new Switchfoot song, New Year’s Day) – new music that has had, and continues to have, a lifechanging impact. For someone like me, this is more than ‘just music’; a major release like this becomes a significant life event, new songs become friends, lovers, mentors to me, guiding my walk with God and shaping who I am. I won’t go into details on individual songs here, I’ll leave that for a future post, but these songs truly make me who I am.

I was obviously a huge fan already, but by the end of the year my fan-love really was off the scale; he topped everything by celebrating the final release of The Wonderlands by performing 25 shows in 24 hours in a whole series of different weird and wonderful locations around San Diego, featuring each of the 25 songs from the project played at its appropriate hour, and all done to raise money for local disadvantaged kids. I couldn’t be there in person, but I was more than there in spirit; I stayed up the entire 24 hours, watching social media and periscope to catch as much of the event as I could and sending supportive messages and chatting to fellow fans watching from home too. Oh my heart! I don’t think I can exaggerate how beautiful the whole thing was! I’m not sure what I expected but Jon earnt my admiration hundreds of times over that day, not only keeping going but getting better as it went on, showing a lot of kindness to the fans and fellow musicians there, and having a lot of fun with it all too. There were some absolutely classic moments. It has been filmed, and trust me, if the film gets released you really do want to see it! For now, I collected a playlist of as many fan videos as I’ve been able to find.

Wow wow. Where does it go from here?!

 

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2015 was also the year I:

• Got a smart phone
• Got locked out of facebook over changing my name
• Discovered I like hazelnut lattes
• Watched a solar eclipse
• Tried again to join a samba band…
• Found out how to chop down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring
• Had my first eye test for 10 years, and found I have the beginnings of long sight
• Became a music reviewer
• Got my first henna tattoos
• Discovered cheesy chart music
• Enjoyed a stunningly beautiful autumn
• Saw my work colleagues in a panto
• Quit 2 jobs
• Had a deep conversation with a random guy on a megabus journey
• Gatecrashed a thanksgiving party

It’s been fun! 😀

Oh Come Emmanuel

This week I released my first ever song! It took a lot to get to this point, so I want to share a bit more about both the song itself, and my journey this past two years trying to overcome my fear of singing.

The song is an adaptation of the Advent carol ‘O Come, o come Emmanuel’; I have always loved the haunting tune and message of hope of this song. However, I struggle with the lyrics; full of ‘dayspring’s and ‘rods of Jesse’, it’s not just ‘christianese’, but archaic christianese! Beautiful, poetic, and meaningful too once you dig into it, but requiring a lot of explanation. I also feel, as do many others, that there’s a place for more lament in worship. We sing a lot of celebration songs, rightly as we have so much to be thankful for and to celebrate as Christians. But we live in a broken world, where the promised Kingdom of God, and restored relationships between all things, is still yet to come in full. Sometimes it feels impossibly far off. We shouldn’t gloss over the pain of this in our prayers and worship. In fact I believe part of the process of bringing in the Kingdom is to open ourselves up to feel the chasm between how things currently are, and the potential they have in God’s restored order.

The fasting, waiting, preparation seasons of Lent and Advent in the traditional church calendar are good times to refocus on this before throwing ourselves too heavily back into the celebrations of Christmas and Easter. At Lent we often focus on ourselves, the gap between our own failure and frailty, and where our salvation is headed through Christ. So Advent is the perfect time to look at the wider world, to see our current state of pain, feel ourselves far from home and longing for the promised coming of a restored world, offer the pain to God in prayer and be encouraged by the reality of the promised hope, foreshadowed by the first coming of Jesus as a baby in fulfilment of the ancient messianic prophecies. We spend a lot of time imagining ourselves into the pre-Jesus world, looking towards his first coming as a baby, but not so much time thinking about the in-between state we are in today and looking towards what His return will mean for the world. I decided to rewrite the carol as a modern-day Advent lament, drawing myself as a worshipper to lament the brokenness in our lives and world, how far we feel from God at times, and from being the bringers of the Kingdom… and yet drawing myself to the hope that, as Christ once arrived in this world to begin its salvation, so He will come again to complete it.

That’s a lot to try to achieve in a song! And I’m well aware my lyrics are a little contrived, not as poetic as the original, and are a long way off capturing the hugeness of the modern Advent waiting. But I’m nonetheless, as a beginner songwriter, pleased with how it came out.

Here’s the song; my lyrics are released under a creative commons license so feel free to use or adapt them yourself.

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Lyrics:

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appears
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel

Creation groans in agony
We hold the keys to liberty
But so worn down by cares of life
We e’en neglect our own in strife
(rejoice…)

O God, we feel so far from Thee
Thy presence, Thy eternity
This fallen world is far from home
And You seem hid by cloud, unknown
(rejoice…)

And on that day when God shall dwell
With man in our new ‘Israel’
Thy kingdom come, our fall undone
And all creation joined as one
(rejoice…)

https://broomsofdestruction.bandcamp.com/track/o-come-emmanuel-a-lament

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And learning to sing? That has been a long process! Singing solo has been a paralysing fear as long as I can remember; I’m not sure why but there’s something incredibly, uncomfortably vulnerable about singing, and I just couldn’t make myself do it. Over the past couple of years, since I find these qualities in pretty much everyone I admire, I’ve challenged myself to push out of my comfort zone and become more real, open and vulnerable in as many ways as I can, step by step.

Learning to share my imperfect poetry was a first step; it makes me cringe! But how else can I grow, and how else can I inspire others to share their hearts too if I myself want to wait till I have things perfectly sorted out before sharing? So, I slowly began sharing poetry.

Sharing song lyrics seemed for some reason an extra step of vulnerability, so I began with this, sharing it with my bandmates. The tune already exists, so it wasn’t as painful as sharing an original tune as well as lyrics. And they decided they liked it and wanted to record it for our Christmas album – with me singing it! :O Terrifying!

This whole time I’ve been pushing myself more and more to sing; I’ve been singing group backing vocals for a little while, which is fine if I think noone can hear me individually! I’ve more and more this past couple of years been learning to sing louder so I can be heard, allowing myself to be given a microphone when performing live. Last year for the first time, the band persuaded me to record a harmony part for a song, which although mixed into the finished track would be behind other vocals, it had to be recorded solo; that involved a lot of persuasion, sugar and adrenaline!!

But this year something clicked; M and I were asked to perform at a wedding, and somehow I managed to just take a microphone, set to full volume, and sing a duet with him, with almost no nerves! I’ve since managed to repeat it at a couple of small festivals. At one of the festivals, we had a prophetic prayer session, and the leader came and spent some time praying for me. He began praying for me to find my voice, and though he had no idea he was doing so or the significance of the words to me, his prayers over me began to quote the Switchfoot song ‘Let It Out‘! It changed things for me. Though I was still horrified at the thought of singing a lead vocal on Oh Come Emmanuel, worse, in my own lyrics, I managed it!

Next: Learn to sing solo live, and well 😉

More Christmas music from my band can be found here (a mix of choral, rock and folk carols, original songs silly and serious, and much festivity!), free to download; happy Christmas! 🙂