Monday, February 07, 2005

• Kenny G. needs a haircut...
  
  ...And I'd be more than happy to give it to him and shut his sissy saxophone up too. Sorry for my course tone, but this is the eighth straight day my publisher has put the prissy, curly-headed smirking mime's music on our office intercom, and I'm not sure how much more I can take. I think Kenny would make a good candidate for a celebrity death match with Howard Stern or someone...loser loses the hair...or maybe just a Match of the Kennys with Kenny Rogers and his legions of look-a-likes.

  Thankfully, I have headphones and Derek Webb at my disposal today.

  I'm not usually one to expound upon a certain CD I'm listening too. I'll just let you look at the cute graphic mentioning what I'm listening to/reading, unassuming but quite intentionally packaged at the beginning or end of an entry, hopefully enticing you to further check out how you can purchase said CD/book. Xanga’s gotta pay the bills too, you know. But seriously, Webb’s newest offering, I See Things Upside Down, has really drawn me in.

  Released some three months ago, I only recently bought it because I wanted something new to listen to on my way to Knoxville last week. I thought about buying it long ago, but quite frankly, Webb’s music makes me
  uncomfortable. There’s an honesty that isn't found often in music, especially of the Christian variety. I guess he admits a lot of things that most people are afraid to admit themselves.

  While his first solo album, She Must and Shall Go Free, was a blast of fresh air for me and for most of the Christian marketplace (whether they wanted it or not), it sometimes came off too brash, both lyrically and musically. While I feel that his message of the Church needing reformation was right on, he seemed to adopt a martyr complex in the process, which I felt hurt the album in the long run. I can listen to it once in awhile and get a lot out of it, but more than that leaves me tired.

  Upside Down is much more likeable and thankfully its artistry and lyrically depth have not been sacrificed along the way. It feels like Webb’s not trying so hard to be the voice of a cause, but instead is simply letting his craft speak for itself. It’s quite mellow, making it good for background music despite its heavy lyrical content, and steers away from the folksy tone that made the first record a tad tiring for me.

  The album deals heavily with the paradoxes in the Christian life, i.e. failure = success, poverty = riches, weakness = strengths, foolishness = understanding, and how the Christian responds to these situations. Like the first album, there's also a big emphasis on mentioning the Christian's unmentionables.

  The one track I've found wearing me out is probably one of the album's more poignant, titled "T-shirts (What We Should Be Known For)." Musically, it bears the most resemblance to the style and feel of the first album, thus making it difficult for me to listen to multiple times, but lyrically it speaks volumes. A semi-satire of the classic "They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love," Webb sings "They'll know us by the t-shirts that we wear...the way we point and stare at anyone whose sin looks worse than ours...the billboards that we make just turning God's words into cheap cliches/ says 'what part of murder don't you understand?'..when love is what we should be known for."

  A few of my favorites include: the opener, "I Want a Broken Heart" (I've got faith in the bank and money in my heart/ I've got a calloused place where your ring used to be, my love), the meditative "We Come to You" (As you came to us so we come to you/ fragile as a baby hopeful and new/ but learning fast to walk is to fall/ soon we've done it all), the confession "I Repent" (I repent of my pursuit of America's dream...of living like I deserve anything... of parading my liberty...of trading truth for false unity...of domesticating you until you look just like me), and the closing "What Is Not Love" (when what is true looks more like a knife/ it looks like you're killing me/ but you're saving my life).

  Overall, quite a challenging, yet uplifting album.