We Should See Other Blogs

I’m not here to be a curmudgeon. (Get off my lawn!) Really, I’m not. But you need to like fewer things. You need to be more selective. You need to insist on a higher standard of quality.

If this means watching fewer films, so be it. Only go to see the few that interest you. Don’t go and see everything that comes out of the off-chance some of it might be good.

No only will you save quite a bit of money, but you’ll expose yourself to a whole raft of new things you’d never have though of finding before. After all, when you turn off your shitty radio station, you have time to fill the silence with something new. And believe me, with the amount of stuff out there, you’ll find something new and interesting before you know it.

As a society we’re quite tolerant of things that don’t last. For most things, that’s fine. History will sort it out. But if everything is impermanent, if everything is disposable, if everything is crap, where’s the 10% that history can sort out?

Jars of Clay was my introduction to good music. I was just coming out of the woods of Steve Green, Michael Card, & John Michael Talbot when Jars came along. I wasn’t impressed at first, of course, being the horrible little turd that I was, but a few years passed, I turned on their self-titled disc, and I was enchanted.

There’s something about your initiation into something. A different world of, say, adulthood, or a realm of things previously hidden. Jars of Clay made me think “wow, you can do that?” with music.

Since then, we’ve parted ways a bit. Where Jars of Clay has gone the way of accessible, Christian-friendly music, I’ve been plumbing the depths of the odd and unusual.

This would be where I used to nose the ceiling a bit, but let’s just admit there’s different kinds of music for different kinds of people. And that’s a good thing. Not everyone like Sufjan Stevens, and not everyone likes Kelly Clarkson. That’s just the way it is. I like music with adventure. That’s just who I am. My taste in music isn’t magically better than yours, but please don’t take it badly if I suggest a few diversions from the tried and true. Again, that’s just who I am.

This was were it all began. Strings boiling to the surface, fantastic grooves, obtuse or at least semi-opaque lyrics, and great tunes. The production here was obviously done on a shoestring, but none of the songs falter for it. Even its most celebrated child, Flood was an oddly monochromatic journey, an almost-minimalistic acoustic rock song unlike any I had heard before.

This album changed me. I don’t mean to be melodramatic. It really did. I still listen to this release, not simply for the nostalgia (listening to MWS’s “Change Your World” was built for that, I think), but also because it’s really, really great music.

There must have been so much pressure on the group after the phenomenal success of their debut. It must have been awful trying to make music under that much pressure. But they did.

I’ll admit, I didn’t like “Much Afraid” when it first came out. I listened to it but didn’t buy it. It seemed a radical departure from their sound (though I imagine they’d say their first album was the radical departure). It wasn’t, at least to me, very Jars of Clay. Real drums? Regular tunings? No strange lyrical and musical twists?

Years later, I’ve come back and looked “Much Afraid” in the face. I can see why they named it that. I can see how much time and effort they poured into the record trying to make it solid and original, and I like it for that. The standout songs–not the obvious radio hits–are far better than I remember them. Overjoyed in particular is a wonderful tribute to the craft of songwriting.

I’m sorry I didn’t get it for so long. I really am. But I’m glad I came back to this (and I have to thank Laura for that, mostly; she insisted on listening to it even when I didn’t feel like it), and as time has worn on “Much Afraid” has gotten better and better.

I think every band has this record. They’re sick of the grind, they’re sick of the pressure, and they bring in a well-known producer to make a different sort of album. Of course, I hadn’t exactly had enough time to get used to any particular Jars of Clay sound, so they didn’t really have a left field for me. Then “If I Left The Zoo” came out of, and defined, their left field.

I get it. I do. You want to throw a curve ball. Some of the best music I’ve heard (“Kid A”, anyone?) comes out of left field. But for me, this records felt, and still feels, over-produced. As if they’re trying to hard to be different and original and weird and quirky. I don’t like it. I really tried to like it when I first bought the record, but this is one record that really, really didn’t improve with repeated listens. And now, staring down the barrel of history, it hasn’t improved with time, either.

I realize I’m not supposed to like this album. It’s straight-up radio-friendly pop. There’s nothing challenging about it. It’s smooth like wine from a box is smooth. And yet I love it.

Don’t confuse me with a hipster, here. I don’t like it because I’m not supposed to like it. I like it in spite of that. Maybe it was what I was going through at the time, but a lot of these songs hit a chord of unrequited love and longing. The songs still bring me back to that place, to a shadow of those feelings.

And that’s the ball game. If a song can make you feel without feeling manipulated, it’s good. It’s really that simple. (Of course, not all music is built to make you feel. Steve Reich can pretty much fill up that corner of the room by himself. But feelings are a really, really great shortcut to the logic of living.)

Furthermore is how Jars of Clay does a retrospective. It’s really cool. I love it when bands release two, three, even four versions of a song. I love to examine a piece of music from all angles, like a well-designed automobile or an elegant woman. Getting these stripped-down versions of classic Jars of Clay songs was a fitting gift for the band’s fans, I think. And most of them worked very well, except for the songs from “Eleventh Hour”, which sounded pretty much the same.

If I could ask for one thing, I’d be that every band’s retrospective delivers like “Furthermore” did.

And I guess this is how Jars of Clay does a worship album. I’m sure this bad boy was stipulated in their contract somewhere. There’s a lot of faint praise to be had for this album. If I say it stands head and shoulders above other albums in its genre, that’s hardly a compliment.

It’s solid, I guess. Some of the hymns sound awkward being shoe-horned into modern tunes. Also, it’s hymns, right? I don’t listen to Jars of Clay to hear somebody else’s songs.

I’m probably not alone in having a hard time figuring out what this album is supposed to be. There doesn’t seem to be a grand thread holding it together. More than anything, it feels like a collection of songs someone happened to have lying around, and a lap steel & slide someone else had just learned to play.

Not to say there aren’t any great songs on here. There are plenty. A couple stinkers, but a lot of really great music. I’m hoping that “Who We Are Instead” improves with age like “Much Afraid” did. I really do want to come back to this a few years down the road and appreciate it more then than I do now.

Ah, “Good Monsters”. How I hate you.

This is where Jars of Clay and I really parted company. I can’t stand the sound of this record. It completely turned me off of Jars of Clay. I hate to say it, but it’s true: This album is the point where I went from being a peripheral fan to not being a fan at all.

More uncharted territory for the band, yes. But not all uncharted territory is good territory. Nothing about this record plays to the band’s strengths.

I listened to it a few times, pained, and I’ve never gone back.

When Derek Webb released “Stockholm Syndrome”, I wasn’t sure what to think. How could someone seemingly so deep in the countryside of acoustic music ever release an essentially electronic album? Of course, Derek always finds ways to surprise (and sometimes shock). It worked for him.

It kind of worked for Jars of Clay. Where they lean on electronica heavily, the album succeeds. Where they drift back into saccharine adult contemporary pop, it doesn’t.

I really need to listen to this album again. Maybe even a few times, just to get a grip on what they’ve done and what they’ve tried to. But you know what? I’m not terribly driven to do it.

It’s not that I’ve gone somewhere odd. I still like the same sort of music I always did. Caedmon’s Call still manages to crank out great albums after all these years, albums that play to their strengths. I haven’t started to look down on anything that isn’t semi-ambient metal drone.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s me. I think it’s Jars of Clay. I think they’ve taken the inventiveness of their earlier music and traded it in for a sort of comfortable living deep in the sleepy hills of the Shire. (Third wall: I almost typed “shite” there.) While the rest of the music world is doing things and going places, they’re just sort of meandering along, making smooth song after smooth song.

If this depresses you, you’re not alone. It’s been a long time now; I’d love to plead with Jars of Clay to see the art in themselves.

Here’s a quick question. Why are we biased in favour of new music in worship?

I get this a lot when talking about worship, and I see it in myself too. I lean towards new music. I like to sing songs that reflect my comfort zones, songs that exist in my vernacular.

There’s something disconnected about that, I think. Something off. I mean, we don’t exist apart from the rest of church history. Why would we sing only our own songs? Why not the songs (and Psalms, too; remember that Israel is as much a part of church history as the early church) of our forefathers? We have their faith, after all. We use their theological terms. We rest our faith at least partly on the tradition passed down through history. So why do we so quickly jettison one of the great traditions of the church, namely the songs?

Giving the saints of yesteryear a voice in the goings-on of the modern church is a good exercise in continuity that we’re missing out on. Hymns and psalms aren’t just for the grumpy old people ossifying in their seats. They’re for everyone; they’re a way of saying that we place ourselves firmly in the flow of church history, that we’re not modernist snobs who think we’ve got the best music ever invented.

There’s another question, about why we assume that people jumping around and showing energy and “getting into” the music is always a good thing, or why we assume the Holy Spirit is synonymous with adrenaline, but I’ll leave that for another time.

I have finally found some new music I actually enjoy. Six albums in all. So I will share:

First off, Herik Jose doesn’t have an album per se, but he sure does have some great music. IDM-influenced with gorgeous vocals and strong melody lines, you can think of him as Postal Service without the bluster and bad metaphors. Free downloads too, by the way.

Jack Penate is a lot of things, but subtle isn’t really one of them. Ballsy dance-rock. “Be The One” stands out on Everything Is New.

I want you to listen to Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit because I they’ve mastered that sort of bluesy slow rock that goes well with whiskey and cigars. Also, great to play along with.

John Paul Keith and the Four One Fives (what’s with all the “and the numbers”?) are throwbacks to another, much more awesome time. Some clear 60s influences here. Awesome music. If it doesn’t force you to get up and dance your legs off, you’ve got problems. Or fewer legs than you should.

Oh dear Kanye West. You’re so ubiquitous that I won’t even link to you. Normally your albums have one, maybe two good songs on them. And then you come out with this. Autotune notwithstanding, 808s and Heartbreak is very, very good. “Paranoid” is wonderful, as is “Love Lockdown”. “Heartless”, though, is clearly the stand-out track.

If you don’t like Ohbijou’s “Beacons”, you clearly have no soul. This is the kind of pop music heaven should be filled with. Perhaps a touch too pitch-perfect, but still. Listen and weep.

Right now I’m part of the worship team at Churchill Meadows Christian Church in Mississauga, and I was part of the Freshwater Christian Church worship team before the two churches merged into on combined identity. For the most part, working with the CMCC team has been absolutely wonderful, and I’m really glad to have the chance to use what skills I have as part of the team.

Being part of the whole thing, though, has led me to some observations about our team in particular (observations that would probably be pretty boring to most people, on the whole) and observations about worship teams in general. The general observations are what I’m most interested in, and I think you might be too.

Most worship teams are awful. Just completely awful. They’re awful for several reasons. First, they don’t have the skill as musicians. Second, they have no concept of what it takes to make a good worship team. Third, they don’t have any concept of good music.

My personal opinion is that if you aren’t any good, you shouldn’t play. You’re going to distract from worship, not aid it. After all, isn’t that what worship bands are there for? It’s an aid, to lead in worship, to help the church as a whole worship God. What form that takes is largely irrelevant (though of course there are excesses I won’t even touch on here). The fact is, if you’re distracting people from worshipping, you’re being counter-productive and should remove yourself from the team, or be removed from the team.

This doesn’t happen often enough because team leaders don’t understand what makes a good team and what makes good music, two things I think are closely related. A lot of bands simply throw as many people as they can must up on stage and get everyone to play their hearts out. Though this might seem like a great idea (what’s better than people playing their hearts out?), it usually isn’t. It takes a lot of practice and a good deal of synergy to work as a team, to understand what each other is doing, and especially if you don’t have a lot of time to practice, to know each other well enough that you can predict the direction of the music.

That becomes more difficult the more people you have in the team. Fewer in this instance is almost certainly better. If you have a guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer who are really tight, you don’t need to throw in a percussionist, a pianist, a vocalist, and some interpretive dance. Not only will this make playing together, really together, harder, it’s going to make everything harder. The more instruments you have, the more setup is involved, the harder it is to mix well, and the worse the band is going to sound as whole. It’s just really hard to have seven people making great music.

Not only that, every song has a different feel and a different way it can be played. Some songs are guitar-driven and should stay that way. Other songs are keyboard driven, hymns in particular, and no matter how you try and spice them up, they should stay keyboard driven. When you have six, seven, eight people, everyone has the tendency to play at once. Not only does this generally make an awful din, it does disservice to the songs you’re playing.

I say this as a keyboardist who finds himself almost always superfluous. We have a lead guitarist/vocalist, a backup guitarist/vocalist, another vocalist, a bassist, a drummer, a percussionist, and a keyboardists. Personally, I think that number of people is absurdly hard to make good music with. The leader of a band of that many people is going to have to be good at arranging music and the players themselves will have to practice a lot. Barring that, people are just going to have to sit out a bunch of songs. The leader is going to have to tell his band that they can’t all play at once, that some people are just going to have to sit out some songs, and that if they want a pleasing sound instead of a jumbled cacophony, they’re going to have to put some limits of who’s playing what when.

Of course, this doesn’t happen for a variety of reasons. It goes back to leaders not knowing what good music is, or leaders simply not wanting to hurt feelings or cause conflict. I mean, sure, it’s possible that you’ll find eight people in your church who can play together naturally and not sound like a bunch of monkeys beating on tin cans, but how likely is that?

Some worship teams aren’t awful, of course. If you do it right, you can make really, really good music and aid in worship at the same time. You can be innovative and fresh without being obtrusive and annoying. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen, mostly at churches who have an artistic vision for their worship teams, who have a large talent pool, and who have leaders who aren’t afraid to tell some people to stop playing or dial it back.

If I could say one thing to worship teams around the world it would be this: Bigger isn’t better. Bigger is almost always worse. Think about what you’re trying to do and do that. Put some thought into it. Make a structure and build around it. Figure out what style of music you want to play and then do what you have to in order to play that music with skill and restraint. Don’t just throw people at a stage and hope that they’ll work well together. Figure out what works and go with that. If something isn’t working, don’t do it. If you don’t know what good music is, don’t be in a band. If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t be in a band. If you don’t know how to co-operate, don’t be in a band. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t lead a band, for goodness sake!

In the end I ask this: Is the tendency toward bigger bands really better than a solitary pianist or a three-piece acoustic band? If it isn’t, why are you doing it?

I’m listening to a first-rate performance and recording of Steve Reich’s “Music For 18 Musicians”. It’s absolutely fabulous still, after all these years.

In any case, I figure if I can subject myself to “The Rite of Spring” at the TSO and have to deal with music that hasn’t any meaningful harmony or structure, the least I can do to achieve balance is imbibe a great deal of music that’s nothing but.

1. This evening Laura and I are going to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. It’s a time where people in our church get together and share each other’s food and apparently also get to know each other in the process. I’m making vegetarian past and good old fashioned meat pasta. I can’t be bothered to be innovative for tonight.
2. Again last night… four hour of sleep. This is not good. At all. I went to be at 2300, 2400, 0100, 0200, 0300, 0330, 0400… and the last one was the one that took. But now I’m functioning on nothing more than diet cola and coffee.
3. Laura dropped by the office to say hello and bring me some food. Good wife, that one! And not just because she brings me food.
4. I’m voting NDP this election. I like Jack Layton, I like a lot of their platform, but I especially like their IP stance. Ever since I saw Charlie Angus debating Jim Prentice in the House of Commons, I’ve kind of warmed to the party. But with the Green Party’s current leadership — she looks and talks like a troll and not even a funny GNAA troll or something, plus she seemed out of touch and just a little dumb — looking a little lacklustre, who else to vote for? Certainly not the Liberals, curse their rotten bones. Absolutely not the Conservatives and their Rove-style politics. So there we go.
5. Canadian parliamentary politics is pretty interesting. The only thing that matters in these elections is the PM. All his MPs vote with him on all matter except the rare free votes. All his backbenchers vote with him unless they’re resigned to being backbenchers for the rest of their careers. I don’t like this. What’s the point of having MPs if they can only vote as the PM wills? We may as well just vote for a 4-year dictator and his assorted civil servants: After all, what are the MPs doing but spearheading policy issues for the PM and party brass? The MP voting and selection process is broken and meaningless.
6. I don’t like change any more. I generally don’t like new people. I like the people I already know and the faces I’m already familiar with and the places I’m used to going. Maybe that makes me old or something, but I don’t mind. The only thing I really like is new music. I can get into new music.
7. Oh, and I pretty much hate a lot of worship music. It’s bland, boring, artificial, meaningless junk for the most part.
8. Soon I will be at home cooking a mean. This is good.

• Here we go again!
• One of the great tragedies of the modern church is that we’ve for the most part lost the language of covenant. We still have some of the ideas. But there’s hope. Imagine, if you will, the power of context and the power of covenant wedded to each other; perhaps this is an unholy union of the ancient and the post-modern, but which covenant doesn’t have context? The church and God in the context of his schema of salvation; the covenant of marriage in the context of God and the church’s covenant; these are powerful concepts.
• Share the Well is — and I hate to say this, as much as love Long Line of Leavers — probably the best Caedmon’s Call album ever. So many years and I still love CC. It’s true. I’ve listened to them longer than I’ve been a Christian.
• I’ve heard it said that if God seems distant it’s probably because you’ve drawn away; the implicit assumption is, of course, that God is static and that he always wants to be close. In light of scripture, does this seem true? Are there not many people in scripture who were desperate to draw close to God only to find him still distant? I think when we talk about God we need to remember that he’s also a person, or a Person if you will, who has thoughts higher than ours and a plan greater than we can understand. God’s not static. He moves, we move, it’s the grand danse (as you may have heard said). If God seems distant and you don’t understand why — if you want to draw near and nothing happens — all you can say is that there is a reason. It’s almost blase in its simplicity. But there is a reason. Sometimes you don’t get to understand, sometimes you do, but there’s always a reason.
• It’s hard to synthesise the appalling poverty most of the world labours in and the almost limitless prosperity we enjoy. The question is, of course, at what point does prosperity become a curse? This very blog begs ask that question: I have enough money to buy a computer and enough free time to contribute this ocean of dross that is the internet. How much time do I spend feeding the hungry and how much time do I spend feeding my own various hungers? How much should I?
• Candace is getting baptised on Saturday, which is totally awesome. Baptisms are amazing things, no matter which side of the spectrum you fall on. It’s a powerful symbol no matter how you look on it. I’m a paedobatist by preference, but anyone who fulfils God’s command to baptise is terrific in my books. I have a special bit of confusion for “Reformed Baptist” (decide which side you’re on, you freaks!) who seem to have forgotten that Reformed theology leads inexorably to the baptism of children, but hey, it’s all good.
• It seems to me that a little introspection and self-knowledge is a good thing, but a http://www.aldaily.com/lot leads to confusion. Maybe it’s because people function on a sort of quantum level: You measure yourself enough and you change. Then you have to start over again and it becomes a full-time occupation. And not a fun one.
• Beer is proof that God loves us; dentist are proof he can change his mind.
• I’m less three teeth, by the way.
• You ever have it where you say, “It can’t get any better than this?” and then it does? Yeah. I got that. It’s called marriage. I’m an incurable optimist, it’s true.
• This is probably the best thing I have in my feeds.
• It seems every nation has its legacy to overcome. US, India, China, all the big ones.

• Sometimes when Laura leaves the house to go out and do whatever, I do dishes and listen to post-rock. You know, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Mono, Red Sparrowes, that sort of thing. Right now I’m listening to This is Your Captain Speaking. It’s good stuff! If you’ve ever listened to post-rock, you’ll know how hard it is to come across truly interesting material, even by those veterans of the genre such as (and especially) Mogwai. TIYCS seems interested in being interesting. That’s good.
• I don’t like megachurches. I mean, I can see where they fit into the ecosystem of Christianity — if it can be called an ecosystem as opposed to a burgeoning, idiotic choas — but I don’t like them. I don’t think I ever will. It’s not simply that they’re generally white, suburban, middle-class and almost always utterly devoted to not offending anyone. It’s that they’re not distributed enough. They’re too centralised. Thus, one pastor boffs his secretary, the whole thing goes under, and your sanctuary gets converted into indoor soccer field. I’m pretty sure churches should be small, efficient, face-to-face, involved, local, community-based, and active. But mostly small. Enough that you can’t hide in the crowds. But also enough that if something goes wrong, and entire faith community isn’t left floundering in the shallows.
• Let me ask you this: Why do you dislike Thomas Kinkade’s art? Is it because his art is bad? I bet it isn’t. I bet you don’t know good art from bad art even if such things exist. What you probably mean to say, instead of, “I dislike Thoman Kinkade’s art,” is, “I dislike Thomas Kinkade“. That would probably be more accurate. You don’t like his commercialising of his art (but when was art ever not commercial?), you dislike his subject matter (though his paintings are quite nice to look at), and you especially dislike the types of people who buy his prints (you think they’re generally the unwashed white trash living in trailer parks somewhere, their floor and ceilings and furniture covered in linoleum). You don’t want to be one of them, because that wouldn’t be… something. Wouldn’t be cool, wouldn’t be acceptable to your peers, wouldn’t truly speak to your sensibilities and your good taste. Maybe what you should say instead is, “It’s not kosher to like Thomas Kinkade… so I don’t like him.” Because at least then you’d be a bit more honest. In the meantime, look at some of his paintings. They’re quite nice.
• This may be some indie music heresy, but you know what’s wrong with My Bloody Valentine? They’re completely and mind-numbingly boring. Sure, they came up with sounds no-one had ever heard a guitar make before, but none of those sounds is interesting.
• I hate modern classical music. I really do. Things started going off the rails in the early 1900s and haven’t gotten back on since. Once I thought, “Why have people accepted abstract art, but not abstract music?” The answer is, of course, that a bunch of different colours splashed on a canvas a la Pollock can be extraordinarily — if unintentionally — beautiful. It doesn’t hurt me to look at. Notes seemingly scribbled on a page at random, however, has the capability to make me — and from the look of it lots of people — wince. (I am abusing my dashes; I know.) Harmony and melody aren’t old social conventions meant to stifle the artists. They are a common framework in which we as Westerners operate. It may indeed be that this only a custom, but that doesn’t matter: It’s ingrained and there’s no point in the composer trying to wiggle it loose. You are literally hurting me with your atonal disasters, your craptastic 12-tone form, and your alternative rhythmic nightmare. Go write some music someone wants to listen to; see if there is perhaps something of value to be found in those old forms everyone seems to have abandoned without a reasonable alternatives. Rediscover, for heaven’s sake, the power of beautiful music. Don’t make it your mission to question what beauty is. It just is.
• My, there are far too many dishes here.

I really wanted to get this down on the hard drive… and I didn’t realise how bad the piano recording was until I had got to singing. So i just gave up and didn’t bother correcting any of the (obvious) flaws in the levels. It isn’t pretty, I tell you.

Scatterbrain – Ogg Vorbis
Scatterbrain – MP3

Everything I record these days seems to have a ringing noise at the high end… anyone have any ideas how to fix this problem?