Christopher Rush

The Goal is El(ev)ation

Thirteen years before the boys from Ireland refocused their attention and output back on the transcendent, the boys from Canada did the same thing on one of my favorite Rush albums, the oft-overlooked Hold Your Fire.  It might be a bit of a stretch to call this a Forgotten Gem, since it is one of the poorest-selling albums of Rush’s career, and thus it strikes me as more accurate to use this solid album to kick of a new, though related, series, Overlooked Gems.  In retrospect, some of the albums we examined under “Forgotten Gems” may have been similar stretches, but we are nothing at Redeeming Pandora if not flexible.  Anyway, though I speculated last issue if we might bring Forgotten Gems back, this present moment is calling for something else (though I am not unwilling to return to that series should it strike my fancy), and thus we turn to Overlooked Gems.

Hold Your Fire was created in 1987, and while it is often ignored as a whole, it has given us at least two memorable hits: “Force Ten” and “Time Stand Still.”  Like most people (other than the die-hard Rush fans), “Time Stand Still” was the main reason I acquired the album.  I was pleasantly surprised at the rest of the album.  The album is at a transitional period for the band for several reasons: notably it is the last of the “Mercury Era” albums, the beginning of a (short-lived) lighter lyrical output from Neil Peart (here and there), and the beginning of more electronic percussion sounds from Peart (and a new drum set).  It is also a much more pop-rock sounding album than most Rush albums (especially in light of later ’90s releases such as Counterparts and Test for Echo, which are predominantly very heavy rock albums).

In his “making of” snapshot entitled “Fireworks,” Neil Peart highlights many of the changes just mentioned, framing them and more in the general impetus within the band to experiment, grow, and improve their musical and lyrical range.  Sometimes growth and change work in a band’s favor (Achtung Baby), sometimes not (Concerto for Group and Orchestra).  Here, it works far better than most were likely expecting.  The optimistic turn of most of the songs, the pop/Asiatic/keyboard emphases, the gentler, softer feel for much of the album likely threw off much of the public.  So while it is somewhat understandable the initial reaction was bemused disappointment, no such response is warranted yet today.  For some of us, the leaning toward religious ecumenism and naturalistic lyrical underpinnings may detract from our enjoyment, but one never goes to Neil Peart for doctrinal verities.  We can appreciate the journey, the questions, the musical brilliance any way, and take their questions and leanings to the fullest higher place with our Biblical worldview (and aesthetic sensibilities) intact.

“Tough Times Demand Tough Talk Demand Tough Hearts Demand Tough Songs Demand”

“Force Ten” was almost an “afterthought,” Peart says.  Sometimes following those afterthoughts are choices of wisdom.  This is a great song.  It is also an ironic introduction to this album, as the lyrical impetus of the pre-chorus (whatever one calls the initial lines) does not presage an album of “tough talk.”  It’s a fairly encouraging, open-hearted album, as intimated earlier.  Additionally, though memory may mislead as sentimentality and nostalgia tag-team to override veracity at this moment, 1987 wasn’t all that tough a time, at least where I was living it.  Perhaps it was more difficult in Canada, though it is doubtful things were all that difficult for a band with such success (and dosh) as they.  Likely, then, it is not so ironic: as is their wont, Rush sings about timeless matters not kairotic hot topics.  The fire we are to hold is an eternal flame (easy, Bangles fans).  No matter our current circumstances, tough times do indeed demand tough talk, hearts, and songs.

The “tough talk” of the song is truly a litany of encouraging enjoinments.  Whether we are owners of “too-tender hearts” or toughies with “skin as thick as thieves,” we can weather the storms of life.  Life is not an unconquerable enemy, nor is it an unsolvable puzzle.  We can “look the storm in the eye” and be hurricanes ourselves.  The best way to do this is to be aware of life around us: “look in, look out, look around.”  Don’t be so mindful of yourself and your problems: care about others and their life struggles as well.

Some may be turned off by the potential Whitman-like “anything is viable” bent of some lyrics.  While Peart does say “be vain and smart, humble and dumb,” one forgets the helping verb from the beginning of the verse “can” — we can be these things, but that doesn’t mean we should be all those things.  If we are looking out and around, we won’t be destructively vain or dumb.  It is not a stretch to believe Peart prefers the “smart and humble” combination.  Similarly, the “savage grace” line of verse two adds to the quality of the song without promoting relativism.  Man is and likely will be noted for his “savage grace,” this side of eternity.  Man is capable of many things, good and bad, which is exactly what this song portrays.  But thoughts like wearing the “rose of romance” and embracing a joie de vivre likely lean toward living life fully and correctly, living a life of generosity and concern for others, even while the force-ten gales of life storm around us.  Our lives are not just for ourselves.

“Children Growing Up — Old Friends Growing Older”

It’s fair to consider this, “Time Stands Still,” the best song of the album.  Accurate, also.  Like all great works of art, its truth does not change but our experience of its truth increases and improves.  Another irony for this album, the desire to pause in a moment of time succeeds on one level, thanks to this artistic medium: we will be enjoying this song in some form (vinyl, tape, disc, digital, ?) for one hopes a long time (perhaps forever, if one’s desires for the way eternity shapes up come true).  So the song succeeds on one level, though we know the passage of time has a pernicious way of swallowing up all our temporal victories.

Of course, this song means more to us as we live out its lyrics.  When young, we are invincible, time seems to move so slowly, no one could possibly understand what we are going through … Heavens, but we are idiots.  But Peart’s point here is not to reflect upon the past (better we don’t that often, anyway).  Instead, knowing as we do now time is not nearly as lethargic as we want it to be, slow down and look around at now.  Enjoy the moments as you are living them, stop valuing the moments yet to come (that may never happen, and certainly won’t happen the way we intend them to) more than the moments here now.  Oddly, the call to stop and look around is likened to “some captain, / Whose ship runs aground.”  One would think a ship running aground would be a bad thing worth avoiding, and so the comparison appears to stumble a bit — until we realize the actions are not being compared but simply the situations, the effects: the captain isn’t going anywhere, now, all he can do is think and wait.  How much better for us it would be if we could get to the point of a life of contemplation without running the ship of our lives aground first.  (For another fine example of this point, see the best episode of The Andy Griffith Show, “Man in a Hurry.”)

This is unquestionably the best song on the album and thus needs no further comment or explanation from me.  Though, it certainly is a heck of a thing to think about my friends growing older.  Glad that’s not happening to me.

“Time Will Do Its Healing / You’ve Got to Let It Go”

The theme of “time” continues in “Open Secrets,” another solid song many will easily dismiss.  I say “easily,” only because many “fans” only like the songs the radio tells them to like (or whatever source of taste and popularity the independent thinking kids are hearkening to these days), not because it’s an album filler.  Like with so many of the good, solid Rush songs, it’s the sound of their music.  Peart’s lyrical talents are always a rollercoaster, but there is no doubting the musical supremacy of this power trio.  The lyrics of this song are on one level inferior to the two tour-staple “greatest hits,” and the basic idea of paying attention to those with whom we are, their needs, their value is a regular occurrence in the post-Mercury years (especially coming up next on Presto) and thus nothing unusual in the band’s oeuvre … but then comes the bridge.

This album is partly about time, partly about searching for meaning.  We have noted already the tendency toward ecumenism, but the bridge of this song is remarkable in its rejection of pure ratiocination: “I find no absolution / In my rational point of view.”  Even if the thought is limited by its context of “mere” social interaction and willingness to open our hearts to others, casting aside our pain of past hurts and fears of further scorn, and even if the only response is not “seek divine revelation” but “maybe some things are instinctive,” we should take what we can get.  That he is willing to acknowledge man’s reason alone will not solve all our problems is a good start.  That is one way to start building quality relationships, the kind that risk pain and share secrets.  It takes time.  We all have things of which we have to let go.  If we can, if we are willing, that is one way “You could try to understand me — I could try to understand you.”

“We Fight the Fire — While We’re Feeding the Flames”

You might be tempted to think this is the source of the album title, but it isn’t, not immediately.  Certainly the fire imagery (or motif, perhaps) contributes to it, making this a much more unified album than the casual fans who only want digestible radio hits will see.  “Second Nature” continues the potential for instinct begun in “Open Secrets,” but it is admittedly hampered by the threatening cynicism throughout the number.  Certainly the narrator has much to be righteously antagonistic concerning, and while he does a mostly impressive job of avoiding bitterness and sarcastic anger, a tinge of vitriol may discolor the song as a whole for some.  It depends what sort of mood I’m in, personally.  That’s usually why I like to listen to this album when I’m already in a positive, optimistic mood.  (See our “Death to Cynicism 2015” ad in this issue.)  The music attempts to buoy the song up to more than just irritated political antagonism.

One wonders, though, what the actual source of antagonism is actually under scrutiny.  Is it the absence of “voices” among the people?  Surely that has been remedied to some extent with the advent of the Information Superhighway.  Is it the “Too many captains / Keep on steering us wrong”? by which one suspects the leaders of the Free World making decisions one doesn’t like?  Which direction is “wrong”?  We aren’t precisely told.  Perhaps that’s part of the point: pick your own source of antipathy and fill in the blanks with it.  One tirade fits all.  Though, musically, it is a delightful tirade.

The cynicism rears its head quite boldly in what may likely be considered the tail end of verse two (unless it is pre-chorus two): the rejection of perfection (though, if it were perfection achieved solely by Franklin-like Enlightenment rationality, we could applaud it), the willingness to compromise for the sake of general amity (making the decade-later “Resist” that much more impressive).

The two choruses, though, may likely prevent the song from being outright cynical in the end.  We are “feeding the flames”; we are not “blameless.”  We are culpable, even if we didn’t start the fire (you don’t mind, do you, Mr. Joel?).  We may have inherited a messy world, but cynically complaining and laying blame while we walk around “without shame” belies our mistaken self-image.  The guilt we see in the mirror does not mean we are looking in someone else’s mirror: we have some ’splainin’ to do as well.  Being bitter makes the problem worse.  Pessimism, says Chesterton, comes from being tired of truth, not falsehood.  Slinging mud at mudslinging politicians doesn’t majickally make the world pristine.  Perhaps it’s an “open letter” not so the “powers-that-be” will see it but so we, the real powers-that-could-be will wake up, slough off our comfortable blankies of blamelaying and start fighting the fire without feeding it.  Fight it with compassion, understanding, humility.  (Is it too much of a stretch to translate the “second nature” of the song as a Biblical “new nature”?  That’s fine.  I’m limber.)

“The Point of Departure is Not to Return”

This jaunty little number gives us an optimistic perspective on life flying in the face of pure materialism, a growing undercurrent of the album, and while it has its flaws (which shouldn’t surprise us), it provides a great song, first and foremost (as “great” as a song of its ilk can be, sure), and a great collection of lyrics about which to have meaningful conversations.  Songs such as this boggle my mind — not of itself, of course, but that an album such as this could go mostly neglected and a band such as this could be denied entrance into a musical hall of fame for so long.

The opening of the song is as follows: “Basic elemental / instinct to survive / stirs the higher passions / thrill to be alive.”  A seeming jumble of contrary ideas, the verse continues: “Alternating currents / in a tidewater surge / rational resistance / to an unwise urge.”  We have seen already on this album both a call to rationality and a caution against uxorious devotion to reason.  Here we now have a call to balance.  The song is called “Prime Mover,” and while the opening lines intimate the eponymous mover is the Darwinian (and potentially Freudian) war against death, with forestalling death being the ultimate value and thus the “prime mover” of all humans do, the “thrill to be alive” sponsored by “the higher passions” surely cannot be a product of simply “trying not to die.”  The “higher passions” bespeak a life far richer and meaningful than the base materialism of Darwinian (or Spencerian) existence.  Admittedly, the “unwise urge” against which “rational resistance” fights could be a spiritual life — but if those “higher passions” are a good, and just being alive is not enough (and surely it isn’t, given not only the tenor of the entire album but Rush’s entire output), a “rational resistance” could not possibly be in favor of embracing solely materialism.  What good would “higher passions” be then?  Since, as the verses say, “anything can happen,” it would truly be “an unwise urge” to dismiss categorically the possibility of the miraculous, the supernatural, the divine.

Some may upbraid such an interpretation, especially in light of the chorus, which says, in part, “the point of the journey is not to arrive.”  Surely this is saying the end goal of life is simply to have a good life, right? and that isn’t in any way a Christian message.  Easy, now.  I’m not trying to foist a Christian message upon this song (as far as I can tell, consciously).  Even so, if the point of the Christian life were (using the subjunctive instead of the past tense; we are living in … never mind) — I say if the point of the Christian life were simply to “go to Heaven,” surely we would all be translated at the moment of justification anyway.  The point of the Christian journey is not (just) to arrive, either.  I don’t see a negative doctrinal frisson here.

Some may then chafe against the more overt deistic sentiments of the last verse.  Well, you may have me there.  Indeed, the song is called “Prime Mover,” not “The God Who is There.”  This isn’t a Dr. Schaeffer work.  Still, as with most of the album, it’s better than an outright rejection of spiritual things.  We can work with this.

Anything can happen.

“It’s Not a Matter of Mercy — It’s Not a Matter of Laws”

Undoubtedly the darkest song on the album (and definitely a top ten all-time dark Rush songs), “Lock and Key” honestly examines the evil within all of us.  The music, though, betrays the sinister elements of this song, being yet again another up-tempo, musically-pleasing number.  Really the song discusses the fact people almost never want to discuss: the destructive, anti-social, downright evil side we all have.  We would call it our “sin nature,” but Peart is not at that point here.  Still, that he is talking about it as if it’s a fact and (perhaps mildly) upbraiding all of us for keeping our badness under “lock and key” instead of discussing it, acknowledging it, and seeking a remedy is noteworthy.  Sure, we know the remedy, but it is difficult trying to share the remedy with people if they aren’t even willing to discuss or even acknowledge the existence of the disease.

I don’t think the line “Plenty of people will kill you / For some fanatical cause” needs to be taken as an assault against Christianity, especially since it is a true statement about so many “tolerant,” peaceful” groups of world denizens outside of Christianity.  Besides, since Christianity is true, it’s not a “fanatical cause,” anyway.

“A Spirit with a Vision is a Dream with a Mission”

Finally we get to the most direct source of the album title with the opening lines of “Mission.”  Underscoring Peart’s lyrical skill (which, yes, does at times fly afield), all this time we’ve likely been thinking “Hold Your Fire” is the typical “stop shooting bullets at those people” idea.  And while that sentiment has certainly undergirded a good deal of the album, in its general “promote peace and unity” sort of way, it is far more clever than that: we each have a flame, a unique fire of spirit, identity, gifts, talents, what have you — don’t hide them under a bushel basket.  No longer the consumptive devastating force, fire transforms into a transcendent symbol of optimistic hope.  “Keep it burning bright / hold the flame / ’til the dream ignites. / A spirit with a vision / is a dream with a mission.”  Truly an uplifting song, literally.

We are again cautioned against inactive, dreamless existing — another enjoyable current of the album advocating the “higher passions” instead of acquisitive materialism.  Additionally, Peart gives us an intriguing possibility the life of a dreamer, the passionate hopeful life of meaning and delight in the Realms of Gold, is only given to those who will make the most of it, who will truly enjoy it.  If such a vivid, vibrant imaginative life were given to the dullards, they would not be able to appreciate it or use it wisely — instead they would try to exchange it for the humdrum life of simply existing.  An intriguing and almost disquieting notion.  Don’t let this happen to you!

This may be the most musically diverse song on the album, which again highlights the importance of diversity and creativity — two ideas essential to a quality life for all of us and neither of which are antagonistic to unity or meaning.  Pursuing the “higher passions,” the gospel, the “finer things” as Brother Steve puts it, does come with a cost: “We each pay a fabulous price / for our visions of Paradise” warns Peart, “but a spirit with a vision / is a dream with a mission.”  No one ever said the quality life worth living would be safe and comfortable.  But unity, meaning, and quality are worth pursuing and fighting for all the same.

“How Can Anybody be Enlightened?  Truth Is After All So Poorly Lit”

Perhaps the album is so poorly received because the songs are quite similar.  We have here again another straightforward song enjoining us not to disengage from the social life of caring about other people.  Don’t hide behind excuses of “I have my own problems.”  Don’t dismiss the detrimental behavior of those we love with “it’s just a stage.”  Don’t excuse the popular voices of falsehood with “it’s just the age.”  We have a role to play, a responsibility to care for others with genuine empathy.  Don’t “turn the page” (the song’s title) and move on as if history and its forces are inexorable and individuals don’t matter.  Certainly we do, but we live better in community.  If life is indeed a powerful wind tunnel, we would certainly do better at surviving it together instead of alone.  Sure, you could shake your head at the line about truth being “so poorly lit,” as if Peart is refuting the light of the gospel and all that … but we are seeing in a mirror darkly, after all, aren’t we?  At least, again, he is not siding with the “light” of the Enlightenment and its outright rejection of divine revelation.  I told you this was a good album — good, at least, as a conversation starter on important things that matter.

“Somewhere in My Instincts the Primitive Took Hold”

I don’t understand why Geddy Lee regrets putting this song, “Tai Shan,” on the album.  It’s musically a lovely, calming song.  Sure, it’s a tribute to China — what’s so bad about that?  It does rebuff earlier songs on the album a smidge, advocating instinct … but, then again, most of the album has been about abjuring pure rationalism, so if there is a rebuff it’s against the willingness to give in to primal instincts, the instincts not of “Lock and Key” but of spirituality, the instincts of the imago dei, perhaps somewhat confused as it might be in this song in the thin air at the top of Mount Tai.  The only thing really “wrong” with this song is it’s too short; we want to hear the unique musical strains more.  Take this song for what it is, a good song about a positive spiritual experience.  Turn it into something later, after you’ve enjoyed and appreciated it for what it actually is.

“In a Driving Rain of Redemption the Water Takes Me Home”

“High Water,” the final song of the album, does have a pervasive “we evolved out of the water” sort of notion (or does it?).  Well, at least he’s not saying “we just came from apes.”  Again, our purpose here is not to try to transmogrify Peart’s lyrics into proto-Christian talk (though much of the album does tend to allow us to lean in that direction, as we have seen), so instead of trying to remake the song into what we want it to be, we’ll just take it as it is (or appears to be).

Looking at this last jaunty tune on the album, it draws many of the ideas of the album together: time, transformation, memory, social community and responsibility, the value of the individual — all come together in an optimistic conclusion.  The optimism again betrays its attempts to reconcile man’s supposed biological evolutionary history with the primal experience of “higher passions”: “We still feel that elation / when the water takes us home.”  If we are truly biologically evolved, why would returning to our primordial watery roots give us a positive feeling?  Surely Peart is not arguing for a sentimental homecoming feeling like returning to the home of our youth at Thanksgiving or Christmastime.  Darwinian evolution (biological, psychological, and sociological) demands we look at our past with contempt: we should be grateful we have escaped the water or the trees or the whatever.  Looking back at our earlier, lesser existence should not inspire elation.  So the song can’t be simply a call to align with and magnify biological or social evolution.

The song praises the paradoxical notions of a) the courageous explorative breaking away from the ancestral watery home and b) the redemptive benefits of returning to said ancestral watery home.  Water’s concomitancy with civilization is not a new concept, nor was it new when Langston Hughes wrote about it for his community almost a century ago.  Peart relates the communal connection of memory and water quite well in only a few lines, yet the tension of that paradox still remains.  All the lyrics about water itself breaking away from its locations, “springing from the weight of the mountains,” bursting from “the heart of the earth,” “flowing out from marble fountains,” on seashores or rainforest — every instance of water moving and escaping is positive, yet no mention of water returning to its source is mentioned, let alone praised.  Thus, statistically, the song praises leaving one’s home/source far more than returning.  So why is the refrain always about the greatness and elation of the water taking us home?

If the water is taking us home, the water is not, as initially seemed, itself our home.  Fair enough.  Throughout the song the water is lifting us up, the water rises (yes, it crashes and flows, too, but mostly it is moving up) and so does whatever is leaving the water.  Up is the dominant direction — but never in a biological, psychological, or sociological sense: it’s never about growing complexity or evolution.  If returning is up, then, away from the muck and mire of the earth, and it’s not the mountains, where else could “home” really be?  If “driving rain” is “redemption,” redemption must come from above, and since even the driving rain takes us home, home must be where redemption comes from — and surely it is not just the clouds!  Home is where redemption comes from. above and beyond Earth.

Well, what do you know.  I told you this was a good album.

Welcome Home

Thus our first exploration of an Overlooked Gem draws to a very satisfactory conclusion, even if we have stretched it more than Lee, Lifeson, and especially Peart intended.  Ever the optimistic band, Rush has given us a much more solid and enjoyable album than just “the one with ‘Force Ten’ and ‘Time Stand Still’ on it.”  Considering all the changes going on in their professional lives at the time, that they gave us a calming, musically-uplifting, thought-provoking optimistic album that encourages us to seek spiritual truth and abjure pure materialistic rationalism as the solution to life’s challenges is truly remarkable and worthy of far more appreciation on our part than the album and the band has received.  So go get your own copy and enjoy it, paradoxes and all.

Christopher Rush

After a painfully long five-year wait, U2’s latest album, Songs of Innocence, burst on the scene like no album before (and possibly likely since).  For no rational reason, this upset a great number of people for a variety of self-serving reasons.  While we advertised an objective review of the album, we first need to examine the tempestuous piffle that arose about the album’s very existence and entrance into our lives.  Next issue in part two, we will examine the content of the album itself, certainly a much happier exploration.

Not being a mindless consumer erotically devoted to whatever soul-syphoning piece of technological pap advertisements and other minions of Beëlzebub tell me to worship with God’s money, I do not have a cellular phone or a tablet (yes, I have a computer, but it’s used mostly for the performance of my job and manufacturing beautiful things such as this issue, so I’m not wholly opposed to technology qua technology).  Yes, people I love have cellular phones and tablets, and that’s fine for them.  I know from personal experience and interaction they aren’t the mindless cyphers about whom Wordsworth, Johnson, Auden and so many others have written for centuries in the post-Industrial Revolutionary ages.  And certainly you aren’t like that, either.  You, surely, are not addicted to social media or screen fondling of any kind.  It’s them, really.  Those poor saps out there who need our pity and our love.  These are the, well, for lack of a less accurate word, imbeciles who ranted and groused and bloviated about Songs of Innocence appearing unbidden and at no cost whatever to them in their iTunes accounts and on their iPhones and on their iPods and on their iPads.  “How dare U2 put their new album on my device for free!” or words to that effect.  What a world.

I admit freely I have an iTunes account, and I even have an “old” iPod, so I am not trying to hypocritically decry the existence of these things in our lives.  If anyone needs a detailed explanation of the veracity of the topic sentence of the prior paragraph, perhaps we can address that in a future objective, calm exposition (similar to the calm, objective exposition we are experiencing together presently).  I have used my iTunes account infrequently of late, though I admit I have used it in the past for many things such as Intro. to Humanities and personal use in days gone by.  The only time my iPod sees any action is two-fold: a) as an alarm clock (so about 12 seconds a day) and b) when I need to go out and do yard work (so not very much).  I’m not bragging; these are simply the facts.  Like everyone else in the entire universe, when I am instructed to click on the “accept these terms” dialogue box with the option of reading the terms themselves, I click on the box without reading the actual terms.  Before you accuse me of being a “mindless consumer,” please know I don’t have a credit card saved on my iTunes or PlayStation account, so I’m not worried when the countless litanies of account hackings occur, nor am I all that concerned about whatever terms can do to me and my information.  I don’t post any pictures, I don’t have a “smart” phone (preferring, instead to try to be a smart person), and a comment from me on my Facebook page is a wonderfully rare as an album from Boston.  Or, until recently, an album from U2.  If any hooligans want my information, they are probably going to get it without me making it easier on them.  If you want to store bank accounts on your iTunes account, go for it.  The point at present, though, is those “terms of agreement” no one ever reads.  Apparently, one of those terms we all agreed to was letting Apple put an album in our accounts whether we wanted it or not.  You and I agreed to it.  Getting mad at something you agreed to allow happen does not say much for you (not “you,” of course, but those people).

A few issues ago, Rolling Stone (not the most reputable bastion of meaningful discourse or aesthetic opinion, of course) ran a mildly-intriguing cover story about U2 and this hullaballoo.  Adam Clayton, as is his wont, gave us the most helpful insight into the situation.  It was never U2’s intention to foist the album upon every single iTunes and iThis and iThat account.  The band simply wanted to make the album free for download to whoever wanted it.  It was all Apple’s idea to force the album unbidden into your account.  So getting mad at U2 for a) something that isn’t their fault and b) something you agreed to allow Apple to do in their terms of agreement to which you agreed without reading is puerility at its zenith (in this context, at least).  Here was U2, one of the greatest bands of all time, willing to give their latest, long-awaited album to the digital world for free, and much of the digital world responded with vitriol.  What a world.

Some people complained about the apparent “arrogance” of the band and its infatuation with media spotlight.  We have not heard from the band in 5 years!  The 360° Tour ended over three years ago.  If you people know of other appearances by U2 in any significant fashion since then, please let me know — I’d be glad to experience that.  Strange how the same people who own iTunes accounts, iPods, iPads, and other things complain about U2 “selling out” to Apple.  Take a moment and ponder the irony of such a situation.  Sure, the U2-loaded iPod a few years ago may have been a bit extreme, but would the response of an iPod loaded with Disney tunes have received the same backlash?  Doubtful.  A band that does not release music or appear in public until its members are satisfied with their album after over three years of dedication and tinkering and experimenting and soul-searching cannot accurately be labelled “arrogant” or “attention seeking.”  I’m sure they popped on some talkshow or event here and there, but certainly not anything credibly worthy of “arrogant” or “attention seeking.”

Some lesser musician-like people (Nick Mason does not fit here) groused U2’s giving their music away for free was an insult and detrimental betrayal to the hundreds of thousands of struggling musicians who have to sell their music because they aren’t rich and famous like U2, and by setting a precedent of giving their music away for free U2 has permanently damaged the marketplace and all consumers will demand free music forevermore.  First of all, “struggling musician-type person,” by opening your mouth in derision against U2 you have already done far more damage to your reputation than any action U2 could do.  Try to realize you will never be anywhere near as good as they are: your lyrics will be inferior, your musical strains will be inferior, you as an “artist” will forever be inferior to them.  Their actions do not devalue your music: your shoddy, sub-mediocre musicianship devalues your music.  I suppose the complainers in this category made sure they didn’t have any music files they “shared” from anyone and certainly never downloaded any files according to royalty-eschewing methods.  Complaining against a band’s generosity betrays one’s own absence of generosity, proving such complainers are quite likely in the “music business” for all the wrong reasons (perhaps that is too harsh: several of the wrong reasons, then).  I guess they never read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property.  If you haven’t read that one yet, faithful reader, I urge you to.

Some complained because Songs of Innocence is not revolutionary like Achtung Baby or All That You Can’t Leave Behind; some complained about U2 because they think U2 is old hat.  Well, you can’t please everyone.  A band tries to break away and experiment with new sounds, new feelings, new content, and the “ol’ faithful” are up in arms.  A band maintains its sound, its “tried and true” formulae, and the “ol’ faithful” are up in arms because the band is slacking off and regurgitating and repackaging old material (unless it’s AC/DC).  Is U2 “old hat”?  I tell you what.  U2’s tripartite métier seems to me a) making the world a better place through quality music and thoughtful lyrics, b) advocating universal justice and equal rights, and c) providing for people an enjoyable musical-and-life experience.  If these are “old hat,” the world does not deserve U2, even U2 for free.  If truth and introspection and openhanded generosity of spirit are old fashioned, then we are all in far more trouble than we think we are.

I have been eagerly anticipating Songs of Ascent for over 1,000 days, longer than Anne Boleyn was queen of England.  Out of nowhere, Songs of Innocence appeared.  For free!  11 new songs from one of the best bands of all time.  For free.  11 ultra-personal songs of soul-bearing, openhanded generosity.  I don’t need another Achtung Baby or something “revolutionary.”  A new album from U2 is revolutionary enough.  And I didn’t have to pay for it.

Dear world: U2 has given us a wonderful gift.  As we shall see in part two, it’s also a very good album.  Don’t prove your utter undeserving worthlessness by complaining about it.  Maybe that was too harsh.  I take that back.  Don’t be lump.  No more cynicism.  Be grateful.  Be thankful.  Be gracious.

Thank you, U2.  I, for one, appreciate what you have given us.

Christopher Rush

Ending is Better Than Mending

No, not really.  But this does seem like a good place to finish our nearly year-long journey through some elite-level forgotten gems of the musical realm with an appropriately titled and themed album from one of the most underrated bands of the twentieth century, The Moody Blues.  Adaptability is not a sign of weakness: it is a sign of strength, especially when it is not Vichy-like.  The Moody Blues survived the musical fads and fashions of more than four decades, which is something only a select few bands can say with anything remotely resembling self-respect.  Sure, they have had line-up changes over the years, since their main reconstruction in ’66-’67, but other than U2, who hasn’t?  Their creative hiatus after this album allowed the band to grow in better ways than numerically, and we are much richer for it as listeners, with their solo and duet works as well as the great output from ’78-’03 (not to mention all their live shows and albums and compilations in the last decade), including my two favorite Moody Blues songs, “Your Wildest Dreams” and “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” (though, since the latter is a sequel to the former, perhaps we could call them two parts to one ultra-elite magnificent song).  The band clearly needed and benefitted from a break after this album, just like we all need a break after this school year and season of fantastic journaling.  Even so, this album is a great album from beginning to end, with no real weak links (despite what some people say about “When You’re a Free Man”).  Though tensions were high and emotions were frayed, The Moody Blues produced some of their best work here, and we should always have Seventh Sojourn handy in our music playing machines (whatever they look like in your home and/or automobile).

“Lost in a Lost World”

The album, demonstrating its over-taxed circumstances of construction, begins with a borderline pessimistic song, though it gains a great deal of optimism for most of it, and this song is more accurately disconsolate than sheer pessimistic, since this opening number at least recognizes the potential and only source of hope.  “I woke up today, I was crying / Lost in a lost world” — that’s about as disconsolate as any of the songs we’ve explored this year.  In a sense, though, it is how we should react a fair amount of the time as Christians: “So many people are dying / Lost in a lost world.”  It’s true.  The world is full of people “living an illusion,” whether it is tethered by racism, classism, or just generic atheism.  Revolution is not the answer; it’s just another threat, “another form of gun” used to do wrong unto others what was wrongly done unto them.  Mike Pinder, fortunately, points us to the way out of this mess: “Love will find us in the end … / We’ve got to bend / Down on our knees and say a prayer.”  Genuine communion with spirituality is the only way out of this physical mess, since the mess is not physical in origin: the ultimate problem is spiritual disharmony with God, and thus with Love and Reality.  The music throughout the song maintains the disconsolate tone, with its march-like syncopation.  The music feels like it is a band playing the wrong kind of venue, sort of like the concert band is forced to do the parade instead of the marching band.  Things are out of place, sounds are out of place (without being discordant or harmonically off).  Even the hopeful bridge can’t escape the overbearing music, since the people are not yet where they need to be, even though salvation is possible and near.  Sometimes songs don’t have to be happy to be worth hearing (and heeding).  “Lost in a Lost World” is one such song.  Mike Pinder’s lyrical and musical contributions should likewise not be forgotten in the great history of The Moody Blues.

“New Horizons”

“New Horizons” is a quintessential example of The Moody Blues’s ability to create complex songs.  We knew that from the very beginning, with Days of Future Passed, but they never lost that possibly-genius ability.  The lyrics are fledglingly optimistic, to neologize for a moment.  Justin Hayward presents us with that painful moment of transition during the ending of one phase of life and the beginning of something new and better, yet still experiencing the lingering memories and sensations of mistakes made and regrets unforgotten, coupled with the bolstering hope of the good memories and sensations available to provide future comfort when the other sensations have been accurately accounted for, quantified, qualified, and compartmentalized.  It’s the “someday” line/word that evokes the most emotion, I think.  He knows (not just thinks or guesses, he knows) he will “find my own peace of mind” — there will be comfort and love and joy and contentment to be experienced.  He’s “never going to lose your precious gift” (the “your” being the lady love he has to leave, most likely, or whatever situation in life on from which it is time to move).  It will always be with him; he is “beginning to see” what this new life will be; he will find that peace of mind … someday.  The music mirrors this borderland realm — it is always trying to move forward, it is very willing to do so, but it is not fully prepared to get there just yet.  It’s a bit difficult to explain — listen to it and find out what it’s much better than can be accurately described here.

“For My Lady”

Flautist Ray Thomas has created quite the impressive sea shanty with “For My Lady.”  I’m not certain he was going for a sea shanty with this thoroughly beautiful song, but he did it.  Though this and “New Horizons” were written lyrically by different people, they form a good pair on this album.  “For My Lady” embraces the outright gentleness and peaceful resolution to life’s changes and challenges not fully attainable in “New Horizons.”  It’s certainly one of the most optimistic and encouraging songs in my admitted limited musical experience: “Oh I’d give my life so lightly / For my gentle lady / Give it freely and completely / To my lady” says the sweet chorus.  Unlike the current trends of mixing lyrics with antagonistic musical accompaniment, “For My Lady” is both lyrically and musically sweet (not in a syrupy way, either — not that there would necessarily be anything wrong with that if it was).  Not surprisingly, the flute dominates the melodic line and musical interlude, which fits well for the ideas of the song: “Set sail before the sun / Feel the warmth that’s just begun / Share each and every dream / They belong to everyone,” says the final verse.  Admittedly the flute is associated with rather shady characters in myth and lore around the world, but the archetypal notion of the flute, the warm summer day, sailing the breeze-driven sea, dreaming the day away (for a time, not for ever), being in love — a selfless, self-sacrificial love, and thus Biblically accurate — all make for a superb song.  More songs should sound and speak like this.

“Isn’t Life Strange?”

Furthering the album’s increasingly overt theme of questing for identity, understanding, and finding one’s place in the world, John Lodge’s first of two songs on the album (strangely enough, the only two single releases from the album, this and the closing “I’m Just a Singer…”) continues to ask penetrating questions: how do we know who we are? who are we supposed to be? how does the passage of time connect to our understanding of who we are?  Though these are not the questions he asks verbatim, they are essentially what his lyrics imply: life is strange, love is strange, both are hard to understand yet both are essential.  There is a sense of the return to despondency with this song, as the narrator seems to be lamenting lost love reminiscent of “New Horizons” in contrast to the optimistic togetherness of “For My Lady.”  Even so, the chorus remains optimistic in its zeal, supported by the musical uniqueness of its accompaniment: “Wish I could be in your heart / To be one with your love / Wish I could be in your eyes / Looking back there you were / And here we are.”  The force of the music makes me think there is great hope underlying these potentially melancholy lyrics.  The verses add to the theme of redeeming the time: “Isn’t life strange? / A turn of the page / A book without light / Unless with love we write,” says the first half of verse three (by my count).  Life is meaningless without love — as this has been one of the main themes of the entire run of Redeeming Pandora, it’s nice to realize we agree with The Moody Blues.

“You And Me”

With a flip of the record, we realize what we thought initially was a tone of despondency was in fact simply the main theme of the album: The Moody Blues are simply asking the questions we are all asking about life, its purpose, its meaning, and they have been telling us all along they have just as few answers as the rest of us have.  They are no more despondent than we should be — optimistic, in fact, as we should be.  Just as we saw in “Isn’t Life Strange?,” questions abound … but so, too, does love.

The Moody Blues are certainly a product of their time, even though a vast majority of their great songs have lasted in an ageless quality (with or without the synthesizer) because of their timeless content.  “You and Me” is a fine example of how The Moody Blues can transcend their time while being very much dependent on the time: without any coaching, those of us who may have missed the Nixon Administration (and those flanking it) would not have been able to tell this is a protest song against the Vietnam War.  The opening line, “There’s a leafless tree in Asia,” sounds innocuous enough to me, leading me to think about the general ecological concerns people have, especially since the opening stanza is replete with geological thoughts: “Under the sun there’s a homeless man / There’s a forest fire in the valley / Where the story all began.”  Experts tell us, though, the opening line alludes to Vietnam.  Allowing the accuracy (not to be precious) of such an interpretations, as stated before, the song has outlived its contemporaneity and transformed in the intervening years to be a still-relevant cry against general ecological and sociological mismanagement (to put it in overly-kind and apolitical terms).

The chorus of this impressively up-tempo protest song disabuses the interpretive misalignment upon which most of us operate (at least through our initial listening-through of the album): “All we are trying to say is / We are all we’ve got / You and me just cannot fail / If we never, never stop.”  They aren’t trying to plunge us into despair by claiming we are all lost in a lost world; they aren’t telling us to forsake the past and seek new horizons.  They are just “Singing all [their] hopes and dreams.”  They are just as mystified about life as the rest of us.  Of course, as Christians, we have a stronger grasp on purpose and direction, and though it is somewhat painful to disagree with The Moody Blues, we know we are not all we’ve got, which is the quintessence of why we don’t have to be disconsolate in this lost world — because we once were lost but now we’re found.  The encouragement they offer (“never, never stop”) is potentially futile unless it is coupled with alignment with Ultimate Reality, with the God Who is Love.  Once we have done that, and the “you” becomes “You,” this song becomes as authentically Christian as anything out there (perhaps more so).

“The Land of Make-Believe”

I like this song.  Maybe I’m in the minority, but that’s quite all right with me as you know by now, if you’ve read other articles in this very issue.  Since we are not here to spiritualize things, which we all know is bad hermeneutics (you are missed, Dr. Dave), it wouldn’t do any good to say “they are really singing about Heaven and the life to come.”  It’s possible The Moody Blues are just imagining a utopia in which “heartaches can turn into joy,” since that doesn’t happen in this present incarnation as much as we would like.  Regardless of whether they are truly singing about Heaven or just a fairy-tale land reminiscent of the underworld in Final Fantasy IV, the fundamental message of the song is true: “Love’s the only reason why” we exist, “Only love will see us through / You know what love can do to you.”  This life is all about love, indeed.  Perhaps the “make-believe” of the title is not as serious as it at first seems, and they are ironically reminding us “it’s only make-believe because not enough of you live this way yet.”

“When You’re a Free Man”

Like the previous song, Mike Pinder’s “When You’re a Free Man” imagines a utopian society, but the musical accompaniment this time makes us think we are in a sort of Kafkaesque utopian society (if we can use such a word without being cliché … which isn’t an adjective, anyway, people).  The song is about the quick passage of time, but the music is slightly slower than if you paused the album (but I kid The Moody Blues — as I said earlier, I like this song, even if most think it is the weak link on the album).  We shouldn’t be too surprised this song is another tribute to Timothy Leary, though why The Moody Blues are so keen on referencing him is somewhat beyond me.  Fortunately they seemed to have outgrown him by the time they regrouped after their hiatus following the album under present examination.  Again, we don’t want to spiritualize the album, and we would be straining that notion if we tried to “rescue” this song too much from its original intention, but again, if something is true, it’s true, regardless of who originally said it or why.  When The Moody Blues enjoin us with “Let’s be God’s children and live in perfect peace,” it’s still a pretty excellent idea (if you’ll allow the expression), even if they meant it not as well as we would have liked.  I’m rather skeptical we will see Timothy Leary again when we are all free from the sin which so easily entangles us … but I wouldn’t be surprised if we are still singing The Moody Blues songs then.

“I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)”

One last time (before a five-year hiatus), The Moody Blues remind us they are no experts on life — they are just a rock and roll band.  Don’t look to them for answers — go out and live your own life.  Fortunately for us, we know where the answers for life are located.  Fortunately as well, we can enjoy great music like Seventh Sojourn from The Moody Blues, especially when we have the answers to the questions they ask.  They ask the questions better than most bands do, and by this time in their diverse recording career, they were polished, poised, and, well, petered out.  This song musically mirrors the band precisely this way: full of energy, being themselves (not what people expect them to be), asking intelligent questions all the way … eventually they run out of steam and it all comes crashing to a halt.  Fortunately again, they picked it all up again soon enough (with some rather impressive solo and duet work in the meantime, especially Blue Jays, which we all know should have ended with “Saved by the Music,” but that’s a story for another time), and we can enjoy it all today.  This is probably one of their most recognizable songs, and certainly one of their better numbers, which is saying a good deal considering their vast, diverse output.  It’s a fitting end thematically to the album: what appeared to be pessimistic despondency was just sincere appraisal and confusion of a world out of tune — something is not right (totally depraved, in fact, in a lost world), and sometimes moving on means letting go, but hope still exists (as evidenced by this very journal’s raison d’être) and love will see us through.  In the meantime, don’t go searching for answers in the wrong places.  Just enjoy the music.

Music is the Traveler Crossing Our World

From Days of Future Passed (you aren’t counting The Magnificent Moodies, are you?) to December and everything else in-between, The Moody Blues have given us a thoroughly enjoyable output, with Seventh Sojourn one of their most enjoyable albums from beginning to end with no real weak links.  For those who know only the ’80s synthesizer oeuvre of The Moody Blues (which, don’t get me wrong, is one of my favorites, since I’ve already admitted my favorite MB songs come from then), it’s time to go back to the band’s early era.  Check out all their early albums, and though you’ll probably find some of their early stuff rather strange (after DFP, which is the most melodic and brilliant orchestral concept album ever made), you will find Seventh Sojourn is a gem that should not be forgotten.  Don’t just take my word for it — listen to them for yourself.  I’m just an editor for a scholarly journal.

Goodnight and Good Listening

We hope you have enjoyed our brief look at some of the forgotten gems of our recent musical past; I know I have.  If you have been encouraged to listen to any of these albums and discover an enjoyable musical addition to your appreciation for life in its multifarious beauties, or rediscovered an old musical gem of a friend you had forgotten, then our work is done for another season.  We at Redeeming Pandora wish you a continued delightful musical journey, whatever your tastes and fancies.  Continue to seek out new horizons and enjoy the best of what is being made today, but don’t forget the gems of days gone by.  You’ll be glad you kept them with you all of your days.  Goodnight and good listening, friends.

Christopher Rush

I Knew We’d Get There Somehow

See, I told you.  It took an extra year, but we managed to find time to talk about Genesis’s first post-Gabriel-era album, A Trick of the Tail.  As we’ve said elsewhere, it would be fatuous to contrast different albums from the same artist as if they are in competition, and certainly comparing or contrasting different eras of Genesis’s long, multifaceted career, would be especially fruitless.  Some people prefer the Gabriel era, some the Collins era — neither is “wrong” in that preference.  Both are wrong to say one era is “better” than the other.  Different eras, we also said, were marked by different creative tendencies — so we are not here to say A Trick of the Tail is anything other than a great album marked by many continuing elements from the Gabriel era as well as the nascence of new artistic directions (though the radio-friendly “pop music” version of Genesis most know best did not really come about until the line-up was down to Phil Collins, Tony Banks, and Mike Rutherford — and even then not until their late ’80s releases).  We begin in 7/8 time…

“Dance on a Volcano”

In a complex junction of rhythm and accent, Genesis proves they have not any musical talent in the intervening period transitioning from the Gabriel era to the Collins era (and we would do well to remember Phil Collins didn’t want to be the new vocalist in the first place, so any charges against him of greedily turning a great progressive rock band into a mainstream pop machine are thoroughly ungrounded in reality).  They are truly superlative musicians.  The message of the song is clear enough, once we have waded through the conflicting musical and lyrical barriers intentionally constructed to mimic the ideas presented: life is full of complications and dangers, but it is important.  “You better start doing it right.”  From the very beginning of the album we are reminded why we should always listen to more Genesis: their music is superb and their lyrics are true.

“Entangled”

“Entangled” is another great example of Genesis’s ability to create a thoroughly musically enjoyable song while simultaneously singing about something frightening or miasmatic.  “Miasmatic” works especially well here, considering the song is about a virulent plague and a medical staff only too eager to experiment on patients to find, essentially, a nostrum.  On the other hand, we can’t question how beautiful the music is.  This album is full of songs aesthetically superior to many albums, including other Genesis albums.  The weight of this song increases throughout, making the experience of it exponential until the, as Tony Banks himself put it, “cathedral-like” conclusion.  It is reminiscent of “Comfortably Numb” in a loose way, but it never gets as rock-heavy as Pink Floyd’s song.  Instead the weight comes from the cohesion of various musical lines, driven by the keyboards and not a guitar solo.  It’s still excellent, though.

“Squonk”

“Squonk” is one of those songs you think, from afar, that can’t really work that well, can it? people aren’t going to like it that much, are they?  But somehow, Genesis made it work.  Dipping back briefly into their “songs inspired by myth” mode, Genesis crafts a multi-sectioned song using typical fairy tale accoutrement alluding to the squonk (a ferocious animal in the forests of Pennsylvania that dissolves into tears when captured, according to some), though in typical Genesis fashion, the squonk captured here is not ferocious after all, but a simple, quiet creature preferring to be left alone, afraid of everything, likened to an ugly duckling.  It’s not an anti-hunting song, it’s not a pro-forestry song … it’s another impressive Genesis “getting you to think about it” song, driven by musicianship.

“Mad Man Moon”

Continuing the construction premise of multiple musical sections, “Mad Man Moon” is a kind of ternary form.  I’m tempted to call this song more “conventionally pretty” than “Entangled,” but I don’t want that to be taken as a slight against “Mad Man Moon.”  It truly is a lovely song — Tony Banks’s lyrics are typical Genesis, in that they are evocative and sweet and painful and revivifying at once.  The opening section of longing tinged with regret slowly blends into the middle section of the Sandman, whose castanets and syncopation bring the dreamer/narrator back to the opening melodic section, forcing him and us out of our dreams.  We, too, are “forever caught in desert lands,” but we should heed their warning and not “disbelieve the sea.”  There is more to life than this, but we don’t need to dream to find it or escape ourselves now.

“Robbery, Assault and Battery”

The middle “Sandman” section of the previous song feels like it comes back again, mixed with a call-back to “The Battle of Epping Forest” from Selling England by the Pound.  It’s easy to consider this the weak link on the album, but it’s not as easy to support that claim with meaningful reasoning, other than because it feels so much like “Epping Forest” on a localized scale (individual crimes and felonious altercations, not a massive gang war) it’s not outstanding as the rest of the album.  This is not even a fair criticism, I admit — musically it is engaging and full of variety, as so much of the album is.  The atypical syncopation has not gotten tiresome, even after so much use; it’s just one of those songs that doesn’t quite seem to get where it wants to be, but even still the journey there isn’t all that bad.  I know this is faint praise; perhaps the best I can do now is to say the song deserves far more appreciation than I have given it.  Give it a go yourself.

“Ripples…”

Though most of our collections don’t have the ellipsis, it was there originally, and likewise this song does a tremendous job reminding us of the major musical ideas on the album, fitting much better in with the album as a whole.  Again we have a song characterized by the weight of its sounds.  It tries to overwhelm us with beauty, and it comes pretty close.  If you enjoy songs that are beautiful and worth delighting in, you have found another one, thanks to Genesis.  Delight in this song, friends.  The extended musical break toward the close of the song reminds us of “After the Ordeal” and “The Cinema Show” from Selling England, but that can’t possibly ever be a bad thing.  Don’t be bothered by the lyric reminding us the good times of the past leave and don’t come back.  It is never too late to seek a newer world.  The point of life is to move on the beauty to come — take those memories with you as you sail away to a better life to come.

“A Trick of the Tail”

The penultimate song on this potentially-ultimate album sounds like a mix of “Squonk” and “Robbery,” but that is also not intended as a criticism.  It works well, in part because of the shorter length of this song — it doesn’t allow itself to drag on too long in its imitative mood.  The fantastical lyrics loosely influenced by William Golding’s second novel The Inheritors (again, “loosely”) remind us more often than we like to remember the grass is not greener in other pastures.  If we are not content with what we have now, we will be utterly disappointed wherever we go to find more or other things.  Let’s not be too hasty to leave the cities of gold we are in now, as Candide himself showed us long ago as well.  Better to dream of unnamed streets of gold, anyway.  Leave the searching for cities of gold to Esteban and his friends.

“Los Endos”

Leave it to Genesis to conclude an album driven mostly by beautiful sounds with an instrumental displaying once again their musicianship.  Combining various motifs of most (if not all) of the other songs on the album, “Los Endos” is a perfect “exit music” piece recalling to our aural memories some of the highlights of the forgotten gem we have just heard.  Perhaps more impressive is that the song works by itself, even if you haven’t heard the original sources.  Banks, Collins, Hackett, and Rutherford blend the best bits of previous material into an enjoyably new musical experience in its own right.  We should expect nothing less from these masters of music.  If you are wary of Peter Gabriel’s concept album era, if you are tired of Phil Collin’s radio-friendly pop era, well, first of all, quite frankly, that’s rather silly.  Stop that (I say to you in love).  Then give this middle period album, A Trick of the Tail, a try.  It has a great deal of the best of both other eras with very little of the potential drawbacks.  You will really enjoy this forgotten gem.

Christopher Rush

From There to Here

Līve’s fourth studio album, The Distance to Here, is a very full, high-quality album.  Many of course will think it inferior to their sophomore effort (while called Līve), Throwing Copper — and it is difficult to disagree, in one sense.  It is hard to compete with “Lightning Crashes,” “Pillar of Davidson,” “All Over You,” “Iris,” et al. Though, as we saw last time with Sting’s Mercury Falling, it’s just quite possible this effort from Līve, despite the lesser critical acclaim, may be a better, more solid album.  Certainly the “lows” of The Distance to Here are not as low as the “lows” of Throwing Copper.  Even if the “highs” of The Distance to Here are not as high as the “highs” of Throwing Copper, it would still be a more balanced, thoroughly solid album — but again, the point is not to place albums from the same artist in competition with each other.  The point here is to remind ourselves of forgotten gems, one of which is certainly Līve’s 1999 album The Distance to Here.

“The Dolphin’s Cry”

The initial a capella opening is gruff enough and soulful enough to remind us the reasons why Līve were so popular: the band itself was a mix of pounding rhythms and driving sounds, more often than not coupled with intelligent and imaginative lyrics — it is music, after all.  The figurative language lead singer/songwriter Ed Kowalczyk invokes in this song are particularly appealing, in a mysteriously intriguing way: “rose garden of trust,” “swoon of peace,” for examples.  As with so many high-quality songs, the main theme of this debut song is love: “Love will lead us, all right / Love will lead us, she will lead us.”  I see no problem personifying Love as a female for this song: Wisdom is personified as a woman throughout Proverbs.  Kowalczyk further reminds us of the importance of living wisely while we are alive, driven by love — quite reminiscent of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13: “Life is like a shooting star / It don’t matter who you are / If you only run for cover, it’s just a waste of time. / We are lost ’til we are found / This phoenix rises up from the ground / And all these wars are over.”  It’s hard to argue with the veracity of these ideas: it’s unlikely Kowalczyk didn’t have “Amazing Grace” partially in mind, but even if he didn’t, that we think of it when listening to this song supports its own worth.  In a way, we are all like phoenixes, needing to be reborn through love, as the war-like enmity between us and God is ended through this rebirth (as St. Paul emphasizes in Ephesians 2).  That the song is accompanied by a varied, driving music line is a nice bonus.

“The Distance”

I hesitate to say this song is anti-religion.  Religion has gotten a bit of a rough treatment of late, and we would do well to remember “the place where religion finally dies” is Hell, not Heaven.  Even so, there is undeniably an emphasis on personal experience — not necessarily “religious” in a watered-down, meaningless way we sometimes have when skeptically talking of “religious experiences,” but in a personalized, individualized, isolated event in which the Ruler of Heaven reaches down to the narrator in a palpable way.  “I’ve been to pretty buildings, all in search of You / I have lit all the candles, sat in all the pews / The desert had been done before, but I didn’t even care / I got sand in both my shoes and scorpions in my hair,” says the narrator in verse 1.  In a way he is right: it’s not always the right thing for us to do to mimic the experiences or lifestyles of other people who may have had some version of “success” in such a way (what does Jesus say to Peter, after all, but focusing on following Him the way Peter is supposed to, not just mimicking or worrying about how John is supposed to follow Him?).  The chorus explains the narrator’s realization in trying to do faith simply by copying the motions and superficially understood lifestyles (i.e., not understood at all) of “religious people”: “Oh, the distance is not do-able / In these bodies of clay my brother / Oh, the distance, it makes me uncomfortable / Guess it’s natural to feel this way / Oh, let’s hold out for something sweeter / Spread your wings and fly.”  I hesitate, likewise, to say the chorus is in favor of some ascetic rejection of the physical — more likely the song is reminding us genuine spirituality is not just a superficial “going through the motions,” “do what they do” sort of life.  From a purely physical/material perspective, the distance between us and God should be frightening — it truly is unsurpassable simply by our own finite, physical endeavors.  What the narrator (and we all) needs comes to him in verse 2: “My car became the church and I / The worshipper of silence there / In a moment peace came over me / And the One who was beatin’ my heart appeared.”  The parallel to Elijah’s post-mountaintop experience is inescapable.  Few better descriptions of God (“the One who was beatin’ my heart”) exists in rock music.  Kowalczyk reminds us it isn’t the expensiveness of the pilasters or the amount of sculptures adorning the walls that make a building a church: it’s the presence of God that makes a lost soul a dwelling place for the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Peace, the One who is beatin’ all our hearts.  The final outro thoughts, “This distance is dreamin’ / We’re already there,” are certainly true for a post-justification regenerate Christian.  In a real way, the distance between us and God is no longer genuine distance — we only experience it, dreamlike, in a mirror darkly, because we are not fully glorified yet.  We have dwelling in us a down payment of Eternal Life.  We are already in Heaven tonight in a significant way.  This is a truly great song.

“Sparkle”

“Love will overcome / This Love will make us men / Love will draw us in / To wipe our tears away.”  That is self-explanatory, isn’t it?  Any song about turning from hate to faith, driven by Love, declaring “the Giver became the Gift” (again, what exquisite ways Kowalczyk, for all his faults, describes God), encouraging us not to wait for more miracles or more Messiahs or wasting more chances — but see and embrace this Love now … how can it go wrong?  It can’t.  This one doesn’t.

“Run To the Water”

After three superb songs, it would be difficult for any band not from Dublin or Stockbridge to continue the streak.  Līve, somehow, does it superlatively with “Run to the Water.”  Superficially, the song sounds like a Cosmic Humanist/pantheist sort of ditty — but I refute such a claim.  The chorus is too much like Isaiah 55:1 to be anything but truth: “Run to the water and find me there / Burnt to the core but not broken / We’ll cut through the madness / Of these streets below the moon / With a nuclear fire of love in our hearts.”  I hope someday I have a nuclear fire of love in my heart for God and the things above (the things of Love).  The bridge makes the veracity of the song doubly clear: “Yeah, I can see it now Lord / Out beyond all the breakin’ of waves and the tribulation / It’s a place and the home of ascended souls / Who swam out there in love.”  The outro again, if a third witness be necessary, solidifies the intellectual, emotional complex of greatness that is this song: “Rest easy, baby, rest easy / And recognize it all as light and rainbows / Smashed to smithereens and be happy / Run to the water and find me there, oh / Run to the water.”  I’m starting to realize I don’t listen to this album enough myself.

“Sun”

We sometimes get the impression songs that are too fast can’t have much depth to them, in part because the tempo and most likely the duration of the song preclude much profundity of insight — or, if any impressive bits of terse erudition occur, the brevity of the song prevents much if any development of said terse inkling.  Such is the case with “Sun,” but its brief treatment of undeveloped thoughts works well somehow.  Musically, it is an appreciated variation being so quick and driving, especially since after this number the album mellows out tempo-wise for most of its remainder.  Lyrically, considering the Biblical parallelism so much of the album thus far has displayed, it would not be amiss to think the repetition of “sun” should not allow us to also think of “Son,” at least once in a while — nor would it be reading too much into the song to think Kowalczyk is also thinking of Jesus as the light of the world, especially in the chorus: “Sun sun merciful one / Sun sun / Sun sun won’t you lay down your light on us / Sun sun.”  Certainly it would be easy to ridicule such a spiritual treatment of the chorus, favoring a literal interpretation, solely (if you’ll allow the expression).  The verses, though, have too much (albeit brief) intellectual leaning toward a richer experience of the chorus: the verses are all about the need to recognize the material world (and this present incarnational experience of it) for what it is, allowing it its limitations and demanding we look beyond it to something more spiritual, more celestial, more meaningful, driven by “the force and the fire of love / That’s takin’ over my mind / Wakin’ me up / Obligin’ me to the sun / Obligin’ me to the sun” the narrator says at the end of verse two.  In verse three, we are enjoined to satisfy our earthly, human desires in an appropriate way while we are in this incarnation, “But don’t eat the fruit ‘too low’ / Keep climbin’ for the kisses on the other side” — the other side of existence, the spiritual side of life.  The end of the song says “All we need is to come into the sun / We’ve been in the dark for so long / All I need, all we need, all I need, all we need, yeah!”  That isn’t inaccurate.  So far it is at best difficult to find fault with this album.

“Voodoo Lady”

And then comes “Voodoo Lady.”  Admittedly, the low point of the album, though only because of the inexplicably salty lyrics.  At least it isn’t as bad as “Waitress” from Throwing Copper, which is admittedly a mild backhanded sort of compliment.  Musically, the song is skillfully done and musically distinct from the rest of the album; it captures a Bayou Voodoo sinister mysterious atmosphere well without descending into too much darkness (it is still melodic and digestible, musically) — it is darker than Graceland, but not too dark.  The lyrics, though, are off-putting.  “It’s got that word in it,” as Frank says.  Again, we aren’t here to super-spiritualize this album and “make it safe” by tacking on Bible verses.  The earlier songs, though, are too close to the verses mentioned to be over-spiritualizing it.  This song reminds me of King Saul’s encounter with the witch of Endor, but I’m not claiming Kowalczyk had that in mind.  It seems to have that same sort of feel: dark, inappropriate, sinful, yet something true and surprising happens in the midst of all this haze and no one was really prepared for it, even if it was supposedly what they said they wanted to happen.  Still and all, you wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you skipped this one.  I usually do, since I’ve heard it before.

“Where Fishes Go”

This song does an impressive job of both maintaining the mood of the previous, somewhat disappointing, song while also reviving the better lyrical mentality of the songs before it.  Though the tone of the song is one of irritation (in that the narrator has “found God / And He was absolutely nothin’ like me”), we shouldn’t be surprised when people find God does not match their inferior expectations — not everyone reacts with an upsurge of beautification.  Some are, justly to an extent, even more downcast and frustrated, confronted with the realization their perceptions of reality have been altogether incorrect for the entire duration of their lives heretofore.  Light dispels the darkness; it doesn’t make it feel better.  The sad part of the song is that we are to understand the unfortunate nature of the narrator’s somewhat cowardly reaction — fleeing from the Light of God to hide in the sea “’cause that’s where fishes go / When fishes get the sense to flee.”  We take the part of the chorus: “Whatcha doin’ in this darkness baby? / When you know that love will set you free. / Will you stay in the sea forever? / Drownin’ there for all eternity / Whatcha doin’ in this darkness baby? / Livin’ down where the sun don’t shine / Come on out into the light of love / Don’t spend another day / Livin’ in the sea.”  On another note, this album was actually among the first ideas I had for journal articles over a year ago when we began Redeeming Pandora, but as the lyrics of this song (and the pervasive beach/sea/ocean motifs throughout the album) indicate, I knew it would be too soon, considering Brian’s death.  Even almost two years later, it is still difficult to write about lyrics such as these, but we press on, knowing both the utter correctness and necessity of thinking about these ideas, comforted in part by the knowledge Brian is much better off than we are anyway.  Don’t let the people you know stay out in the sea of darkness any longer.  As Stevie Smith reminds us elsewhere: they aren’t waving … they’re drowning.

“Face and Ghost (The Children’s Song)”

The tempo slows down again quite a bit, as much of the latter half of the album does.  Lyrically, the song is another impressive collection of tensions, conflicting perceptions, ambiguities, and paradoxes.  The pervasive motifs of the sun, turning from darkness to light, the distractions of the ocean and the void, the mysterious place where the sky meets the land, all come again in this reflective yet yearning-filled song.  The chorus of questions is something we all long for, perhaps increasingly so the further away from the simplicity of youth (innocence) we get: “Can you hear the children’s song? / Can you take me to that place? / Do you hear the pilgrim’s song? / Can you take me there?”  We all want to go “high above the lamentation upon the desert plane,” where “the darkness turns to light.”  I told you this album was worth listening to.

“Feel the Quiet River Rage”

With a brief return to a fast pace and driving lyrical presentation, Līve grabs us out of our wistful pensiveness with a reminder sometimes pain and water are good things: let’s not be afraid to “suffer the wound” and “never turn from love” and “never turn to hate.”  We need to tear down the walls we construct to hide from the storm of living in a world that hates and fears us — that can do more harm to others than it can do good for us.  “Tear it down and suffer the wound.”  The River of Life, the River of Love has done the saving — let it flow; remember it is still flowing, even though the world is trying to be too loud for us to hear the quiet river rage.

“Meltdown”

Most likely the most abstruse song on the album, “Meltdown” also makes good sense if taken from the hermeneutical perspective we have taken thus far (that Līve is speaking truth more often than not).  God is a consuming fire, is He not? Moses and the burning bush? the Pillar of Fire by night for the Israelites in the wilderness?  Perhaps the song is about the revivifying effects of being in a committed relationship with a woman — but that doesn’t take away from the possibility that “We’re in a spiritual winter / And I long for the one who is / Fire!” makes a good deal of sense spiritually as well.  “How could it be you’ve graced my night? / Like a pardon from the Governor / Like a transplant from the donor / Like a gift from the one who is / Fire! / Amongst the dreamers / You are in my heart.”  Sounds pretty much like spiritual justification to me.  That would make the eponymous “meltdown” actually a good thing (perhaps the best thing) — the spiritual winter, the heart of stone, all has been melted down by the One who is Fire.

“They Stood Up for Love”

Regardless of what the music video implies (since we all know much if not most of the time music videos are out of the creative hands of the artists themselves), this song is a completely true and possibly the best song on the album, which is a bold claim considering the insufficient praise given the album thus far.  “We spend all of our lives goin’ out of our minds / Looking back to our birth, forward to our demise.”  Instead we should be the people who “stood up for love,” who “live in the light.”  I want to be the person who says “I give my heart and soul to the One.”  We are inheritors of a great obligation, from Jesus and Stephen through the Apostles and generations of the Cloud of Witnesses who have stood up for Love, to the kids at Columbine and Virginia Tech and all our brothers and sisters around the world living a much more difficult life for Love than we can even conceive.  Let us not let them down.  Home, indeed, is where the heart is given up to the One.

“We Walk in the Dream”

The more I am trying to convince you how great this album is the more I am proving it to myself.  For this penultimate song, I’ll just let the lyrics of Ed Kowalczyk do the talking (you can imagine how much better it is when accompanied with the rest of Līve’s music — but then stop imagining by actually listening to this song and the rest of this forgotten gem of an album):

“Dance With You”

It would be awfully disappointing for this album to end with a Cosmic Humanist sort of number, making us rethink all the interpretations and seemingly genuine lyrical offerings we have enjoyed throughout this outstanding album.  And it is easy to feel that here: we can too easily get distracted by Kowalczyk’s use of “goddess” and “karmic” and wag a finger and say “nope, not Christian.  Karma and goddesses are not Christian.”  There’s no arguing that, but I don’t think Kowalczyk is using “goddess” for “God” — I’m pretty sure it’s just a nice way of referring to the lady he’s with — if it is an anthropomorphic description of the setting sun … well, so what?  Tolkien, Homer, everybody calls the sun a woman once in a while.  Why not Ed Kowalczyk this one time?  And “karma” means “action.”  Do we dispute the notion our actions in this life affect the life to come?  After an album of oceans and rivers in conflict, the narrator is sitting on the beach, finally at peace, at one with God and nature (that can’t be a bad thing to desire, can it?), “aglow with the taste / Of the demons driven out / And happily replaced / With the presence of real love / The only one who saves.”  You can’t truly find fault with that, can you?  Read the chorus: “I wanna dance with you / I see a world where people live and die with grace / The karmic ocean dried up and leave no trace / I wanna dance with you / I see a sky full of the stars that change our minds / And lead us back to a world we could not face.”  I’m pretty sure I want that, too.  And if it takes the language of India to recognize this, what’s wrong with that?  Verse two is an excellent description of the futility of life without God: “The stillness in your eyes / Convinces me that I / I don’t know a thing / And I been all around the world and I’ve / Tasted all the wines / A half a billion times / Came sickened to your shores / You show me what this life is for.”  That last line is definitely one of my favorites of all time.  The bridge continues this notion: “In this altered state / Full of so much pain and rage / You know we got to find a way to let it go.”  We have to face this world now, while we are here — but that does not stop us from seeing the world, the life, the love to come.

And Back Again

I think I have just convinced myself The Distance to Here is a better album, with only one weak link (how many albums are truly elite from beginning to end, even “greatest hits” albums?), than Throwing Copper .  Perhaps that is a bold claim, and as we’ve said throughout, we aren’t trying to set up any artists’ oeuvre against itself in competition, but I think the album supports such a claim (their sixth album, Birds of Pray, is good as well — very Trekian, the way their even-numbered albums are considered better than the odd).  Nor do I think it is too much to claim listening to this forgotten gem of an album (with or without “Voodoo Lady”) is an act of worship.  If you haven’t yet listened to and enjoyed and worshiped God through Līve’s The Distance to Here, you should get on that now.  You will be better for it.

Christopher Rush

Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid

When this project was first conceived and the list of worthy albums first compiled, I did not consciously associate the albums by any criterion other than my personal desire for them to regain more public consciousness.  On further reflection, however, I realized the first three albums are connected in other ways as well: Graceland and Lean Into It both address various musical forms/situations in bayou country, and Collective Soul’s debut album took its name from “You Can Call Me Al” on Graceland.  Thus, it is fitting to bring them all to your attention in this issue.

Collective Soul is one of the few ’90s bands with any staying power.  This most likely is due to their skill and intellect.  Let’s be honest: Collective Soul’s music is beautiful and their lyrics are true — if any other requirement is needed for a band to be great and worth knowing/enjoying again and again, I don’t know of it.  Certainly all of Collective Soul’s oeuvre could be considered “forgotten gems,” and possibly their self-titled second album has fallen further in public esteem, but Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid should be the beginning place of anyone’s newfound appreciation for one of the few great bands today.

Ye— oop, wait for it … Yeah!

“Shine” is arguably Collective Soul’s biggest hit.  Supposedly it was to be their one hit, making them simply another one-hit wonder from the ’90s.  Six number one songs later, Collective Soul is still around.  “Shine” was my first experience of Collective Soul, hearing it on the radio (which is exactly what they wanted, I must admit).  It was one of those songs Neyens and I made our own for a while, going to/from band practice, singing along with the chorus (at least the “yeah”s) whenever it came on over the radio (he was always the one doing the driving, of course — perhaps that’s where my affinity for singing in the car along with the radio/cd arose, bolstered later by the gang’s penchant for Eve 6’s “Inside Out”).

The song itself is straightforward enough: like most contributions to the Collective Soul oeuvre, it’s about love.  God created the universe by and out of love, not logic or mathematics.  Collective Soul recognizes this far better than most bands publishing under “Christian” labels.  The repeated request “Heaven let your light shine down” is true and right and something we should all desire, just as we should all actively pursue the ameliorative effects of Heaven’s light as the final lines enjoin.  It’s a great song all around.

Lyrical Genius at Play

I don’t want to step on any toes (especially my father’s) by intimating Ed Roland is in the same conversation of musical geniuses as Brian Wilson, but his lyrical ability is quite adroit, especially as evidenced in this song.  “Goodnight, Good Guy” asks very sincere questions from the perspective of genuine faith.  It would take quoting the entire lyrics to begin to capture the depths of the song, but for a good sampling peruse the second verse:

Pretty powerful stuff, especially when supported by the laid-back musical offerings of the band.  It’s a great optimistic song despite (because of?) the questions it asks and the adherence to the divine protection of the Lord.  It’s certainly a great song that deserves far more appreciation and recognition than it has heretofore gotten from most music lovers.

A Great Use of Time

“Laid-back” is probably the best description of the entire album, despite the more famous zest from songs such as “Shine” and “Breathe.”  Nowhere is that better captured in a rock-n-roll form than “Wasting Time,” almost a misnomer of a song, since it is one of the most catchy, enjoyable, repeat-worthy songs one will ever listen to in one’s lifetime.  The mellow introduction breaks out all the Latin Percussion^™ instruments most dabblers in percussion own.  Added to that comes more pensive, soulful lyrics from Ed Roland that, despite their potential to weigh down in despondency, avoid such a miasma by the song’s (and album’s) ever-present embrace of optimism: “Well something’s going wrong inside of you / Burdens bearing down and seeping through / Well, I don’t wanna bleed anymore for you / Oh and I don’t wanna breathe any hatred too.”  The second verse ends with probably my favorite line in the entire Collective Soul oeuvre: “And I don’t want to cling to our ‘used to be’s.”  From that great line about, truly, putting off the old self and putting on the new (and now), the song ratchets up the tempo and vocal emphasis with a sincere and loving (in a “tough love” sort of way) enjoinder to all who are unwilling to cast their cares on the Lord and cling to them desperately for comfort to “take your heart, just take your soul / Just get yourself on out of here / Just take your hurt, just take your pain / Just get yourself on out of here,” because clinging to past hurts and failures is simply “wasting time.”  It’s time to pick up the pieces (all right) and move on.  All of this beauty in under three and one-half minutes.  It’s definitely an album worth listening to from beginning to end, again and again.

No Tears Needed

The same theme continues in “Sister Don’t Cry,” though it’s a much more comforting kind of song.  The music transforms into more of a funk groove, though only slightly, as the synthesized Hammond organ-like sounds propel the song through its sundry sections.  The simple chorus belies the simplicity of its messages: as with “Wasting Time,” genuine life must be lived now; with salvation reigning over us now; we must put aside all the pain we’ve been through (as much as possible) and don’t cry anymore.  Life is a communal journal of relationships and co-mutual restoration through shared sorrows and joys.  Be not afraid of it; cry when it’s time to cry, but (as we learned so well in Twelfth Night) when it’s time to stop crying, stop crying and live again.

Higher and Higher

Most of the selections on Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid are unified songs, making “Love Lifted Me” the most disparate song on the album with three distinct sections.  The first and third sections (the verses and the bridge) are among the most strident moments on the album (certainly “Scream” is the harshest).  This makes the up-tempo dolce middle section (the chorus) seem out of place, at least at first.  With enough repetition, the song leaves one with the impression it all works well together, like another crunchy nutty candy shell and a gooey, nougat-centered treat.  It is a variation on “Amazing Grace,” perhaps, but that theme is true enough to hold up under countless reinventions (lazy contemporary adaptations simply attaching a new “praise chorus” to the old lyrics notwithstanding, a despicable practice worthy of excoriation which Roland masterfully avoids): “Once, I was down and couldn’t see / Then love lifted me. / Yeah, love; it was love / Oh I believe, that love lifted me.”  True indeed.

Brevity is the Soul of Life

Continuing the pervasive “laid-back” style of the album, “In a Moment” is another impressive display of Ed Roland’s lyrical creativity.  Behold the second verse: “Well, it’s a shame our world / Responds to life / As a puzzle in disguise / I wish our course / Would lead us towards / The peace and loving kind.”  The first three lines are excellent (forgiving the overly-informal “well”).  The secular atheist world around us does indeed consider the world to be a puzzle needing decoding (or deconstructing), but too much of life is inexplicable by scientific means alone as if the real source/truth of life is disguised to us in our present inferior material evolutionary state.  Certainly as Christians we know the proper solutions to these confusions, and Roland sings of them quite lucidly: “We’ll never walk hand in hand / Until we let old wounds mend / And we’ll never sing songs as one/ Until we find love.”  The entire album is really an interconnected whole; each song leads into the next and builds upon what has come before.  Some of the unfounded negativity against the album is the seemingly simplistic lyric content: “In a moment, it could happen / We could wake up and be laughin’ / In a moment, it could happen / We could forgive and be happy.”  The truth, especially the truth of the gospel, is linguistically straightforward and simple — and the atheistic world around us is too infatuated with “hard work” to accept this.  It’s merely the practical application of the simple truth that is complicated and difficult.  Fortunately, though, Collective Soul has already given us the answer: love lifts us while Heaven’s light shines down on us.  The redemptive power of Eternal Love only takes a moment to change our lives to enjoy the abundant life we have not just in the life to come but now as well.

Speaking of The Abundant Life…

With the exception of U2 (which is akin to any fantasy discussion beginning with the requisite “with the exception of Tolkien”), no one composes songs about eternity better than Collective Soul does (though Steve Winwood and Three Dog Night come close).  “Heaven’s Already Here” is a great example of Collective Soul’s ability to capture what abiding in Christ is about — true, it’s not just about the life to come, but as Jesus makes clear in John 10:10, eternity is not a “yet forthcoming” thing anyway.  We are in eternity right now (the notion there are two eternities, one that ended when the universe and Time were created and another that will commence when the events of Revelation occur, is, I think we can all agree, preposterous).  The Holy Spirit is within us now — we are, in one very real sense, in Heaven now: at the least, Heaven is in us now.  For the first few years of listening to this album and this song, I completely misunderstood what Ed Roland was trying to get us to realize.  I thought it was some sort of Cosmic Humanist/Transcendentalist malarkey about the “divine essence of monistic spiritual divinity is within so all we must do is seek there to be in harmony with the metaphysical energy of existence,” which made me quite sad for a while — here was an artistically skillful band with many lyrically moving and cogent points, but smack dab in the middle of the album was this song potentially discrediting their other fantastic works.  Finally, though, after taking a pretty decent Sunday school course on “the abundant life,” I was not only reawakened to the truths of John 10:10, but I was also awakened to the Christian verity of this song.  Roland is not urging us to commune with the “occult relation between man and the vegetable” as Emerson enjoins us to do in “Nature.”  Rather, Roland is reminding us of another simple truth Jesus revealed to us so long ago: “Who could bring me Heaven / When Heaven’s already here?”  The brief lyric of the entire song is worth reading through (note the exquisiteness of the second verse — Roland often seems to peak lyrically in the second verse):

v1

Wake up to a new morning

Got my babe by my side

Now I won’t yield to new warnings

’Cause I got my piece of mind.

chorus

Who could bring me Heaven

When Heaven’s already here?

Who could bring me Heaven

When Heaven’s already here?

v2

No more living in darkness

Now that love lights my way

I don’t need any new changes

To make me love today

chorus x2

Combined with the music, this is as about as perfect a song as anyone has ever or could ever compose.  But just when you think the album couldn’t possibly get any better…

Beautiful, More Like

“Pretty Donna” is admittedly not a rock song, but one would be hard-pressed to find a song on a rock album more beautiful than this (Genesis’s “Horizons” comes close from Foxtrot, but I think “Pretty Donna” surpasses it — but only just).  If you are looking for something sublime for a wedding, look no further.  It’s one of those songs that must be experienced to be understood, so listen to it as soon as you can.  Again and again for the rest of your life.

The Trilogy

“Reach,” “Breathe,” and “Scream” have always seemed to me to be a thematic trilogy, increasing in volume, tempo, and temper.  “Reach” is another great example of early Collective Soul’s simple, laid-back style, providing more thoughtful lyrics from the creative mind of Ed Roland: “Should I thirst for meanin’? / Can I beg you for some water? / Should I fight your battles? / Or can I rest upon your shoulders?”  Verse two: “Should I beg for mercy? / Can I be the one you treasure? / Should I question knowledge / Or can I have all of your answers? / Hope I’m able to find love today / Or can I ask you just to light my way?”  Without trying to sound redundant, it’s a great song.  Those listeners who require more “oomph” in their songs might disapprove of the mellow nature of this delightful song, but Beauty needs not apologize to anyone, especially to those whose aesthetic tastes are in need of refinement (or vivification).

“Breathe” brings back a little bit of the groove from “Sister Don’t Cry,” but neither of these early songs is nearly as funky as selections on later albums in Collective Soul’s career.  The lyrics of this ditty are true but most likely the weakest on the album (something has to be).  Continuing the thematic importance of love, love is now a seed and a tune: cultivate it and it will grow, and others will join in on the tune.  Additionally, love is to be the air we breathe (though this may have the weakest lyrics of the album, this song is far better than Michael W. Smith’s semi-recently popular “Breathe” with barely-similar content).  If we breathe love, even in little increments, certainly that will be contagious (in a good way) and help make society what it should become.

“Scream” may be the weakest song on the album (in terms of being the least desirable to listen to again), but only because it is the hardest-pounding song on an album that is mostly, as we keep saying, laid-back and mellow.  It doesn’t seem to fit too much (akin to “Bullet the Blue Sky”’s jarring position on The Joshua Tree), but in other ways it is a natural culmination of the recent lyric progression.  Though later songs in the Collective Soul canon (especially from Blender) are louder and more driving, the song ties elements of trying to understand life’s questions and answers from “Reach” and needing more room to breathe from “Breathe” to an angry, irritated desire for resolution, bringing the trilogy to a full (and dynamic) conclusion.  Even though the beat may perturb, Ed Roland does manage to squeeze in some thoughtful lines: “I don’t want to be some puppet on a string / I don’t want to learn from things you can’t explain / And I don’t want to have your views on everything,” quite similar to W.H. Auden’s point in “The Unknown Citizen.”  In the third verse, Roland gets his most cosmically irritated: “Well God is great and God is good / But God you’ll never be.”  True, but Roland’s motivation for saying this is unclear, unless he is now confronting pseudo-Christian hypocrisy of the time or perhaps just general atheistic destructive and malfeasant attitudes and actions to what life should really be about: “I don’t want to be your hospitality / I don’t want to live with false reality / See I’m the one obsessed with truth and honesty / I just want to scream.”  Most likely we all feel that way (increasingly so) in this dark world and wide as it continues careering away (increasingly so) from Biblical truth toward the morass of diabolical relativism, pragmatism, and Brave New Worldism.

A Double Ending

With all of his ire and energy purgated in the cathartic “Scream,” Roland begins to draw this pristine album to a close with the first of the album’s double-ending songs (another connection to Graceland).  I consider it a double ending because either “Burning Bridges” here or the final song, “All,” could serve equally well as the album’s final musical and lyrical offering.  The music here is self-explanatorily beautiful and needs no further comment.  The sentiment behind the song some obdurate-centered people may find more maudlin than sweet, but the opinions of those people never need be considered.  Sentimentality is painfully underrated today.  The chorus is especially ideal: “So I’ll lift you up and hold you near / I’ll warm your heart and calm your fears / See I don’t want to lose this love I found / So I’ll burn my bridges, burn them down.”  The title might make one presuppose “burning bridges” is a negative thing, since it is so often thought of as a drastic, anti-social event.  Here, though, Roland upends our limited perceptions and connotations by presenting “burning bridges” positively: don’t “keep your options open,” people, he says.  Commit.  John Adams knew it, Ed Roland knows it, God knows it, we should all know it and embrace it.  Commitment.  Love is a commitment, not a fleeting feeling.  The singer hurts when he is not with the one he loves — so do we all.  He is willing to change himself to conform to what love requires of him — so should we all.  It is a great song — so say we all.

As with so much of this album, the thoughts of one song blend into the next, and that is true for its double conclusion.  The solidarity and commitment embraced in “Burning Bridges” continues throughout “All,” especially as evidenced in the chorus: “Yeah, all is all I can give you / All is all I can do / All is all I wish for when I’m with you.”  The pervasive laid-back tempo is present again here, as well.  The quality of musical accompaniment is a dominant factor in Collective Soul for most of its canon (the electronic-driven Blender is a main exception, but it, too, has some very gentle music at times).  Their unique admixture of energy, gentleness, melody, harmony, and intelligent lyrics has dominated the album, and perhaps it reaches an emotional zenith with the bridge of this final song: “Well, I’ll push the clouds away so you can have sunshine / And I’ll give you anything that your heart desires.”  With everything else from Collective Soul, it must be heard to truly be understood and appreciated.  Fortunately, the time taken to listen to their often under forty-minute albums is time wisely and well spent.  You won’t regret it, no matter how many times you do so.

A Double Ending Yields a Double Beginning

By his own admission, most of this debut album was the work of Ed Roland.  Though the band restructured the arrangements and performances somewhat for their early touring, and not all of the band members noted on the album may have actually contributed as much as the liner notes intimate, it is certainly fair to say Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid is the nascence of Collective Soul’s career.  Though the band may consider their self-titled 1995 release their genuine debut album (as a band), and though later sounds and instrumentation of their later work (especially in their electronic phase) are in noticeable ways distinct from this album’s sounds, enough similarities continue and (perhaps inchoately so) tendencies that later return in more mature forms are still extant and evident here: the predominance of one-word-entitled songs, most songs ranging between 3 and 4 minutes in length, Biblical Christian themes and ideas underpinning most lyrics, the impressive mixture of intelligent lyrics and beautiful melodic and harmonic lines, and the cohesion of the entire album as a unified whole more than the sum of its parts.  Similar to Genesis’s From Genesis to Revelation and Trespass (as we saw last year), Collective Soul truly does begin at Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid.  It is truly an enjoyable album from beginning to end, one worth experiencing again and again forever.