The Classic Crime - Vagabonds
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You don’t listen to The Classic Crime expecting some grand reinvention of the modern rock wheel. You listen to them if you want that wheel invented right.
There’s an abundance of bands like The Classic Crime these days. Sure, they’re a little like their Tooth & Nail labelmates Emery and (previously) Anberlin. You could also compare them to All-American Rejects, Fall Out Boy, Foo Fighters, Panic at the Disco, and yes, the every-band comparison, Jimmy Eat World. Take your pick.
Except there’s also plenty to set The Classic Crime apart from more generic sound-alikes. They rely on heavy modern rock flourishes and hooks that still retain a strong pop influence. Matt MacDonald’s voice is loud, sometimes shouting the lyrics instead of singing, but he never screams or disservices the melody. And speaking of which, The Classic Crime excels at über-catchy melodies fueled by shout-along choruses that would seem impossible to resist at concerts.
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Tags: American Idol Top 9
Getting Better [Most of] the Time
The songs of The Beatles are indeed some of the catchiest and best known in pop music history. And many of their songs have been covered hundreds of times by an eclectic array of artists in the last 50 years. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the songs of The Beatles—sorry, “Lennon and McCartney”—helped elevate the overall performances on Idol last night.
Nothing is automatic, of course, as fans of the show may recall when The Beatles catalog was first available two years ago. For every creative interpretation (remember Chikezie Eze’s “She’s a Woman”?) there’s bound to be a train wreck (still trying to suppress Kristy Lee Cook’s “Eight Days a Week”).
Thankfully, no one was awful. At worst, we had a few contestants picking obvious songs suited to their bland, creativity-challenged style—it’s going to cost one of them. But there were also plenty of finalists who took the opportunity to prove they’re more than so-so singers, proving themselves worthy of their own Magical Mystery Tour come summer when the Top 10 visit a city near you.
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Robbie Seay Band - Miracle
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Some have described the music of the Robbie Seay Band as one of the most innovative contributions to modern Christian pop and worship. Others are less impressed, calling them nothing more than a typical modern worship band. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.
It’s amusing to me that so-called “post Christian” twenty-somethings can be so passionately divided over the music they deem worthwhile. Robbie Seay Band’s alternatively minded home congregation, Ecclesia Church Houston, is primarily geared to that demographic, and left-of-center Christian author Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) had also endorsed the music. Yet a quick scan of the websites and blogs concerning Seay’s recent albums reveals some disagreement in the ranks—and that’s not even factoring in the enthusiasm of more conservatively minded Christian sites.
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American Idol Results - Top 10
Kids, Don’t Grow Up to Be These Guys!
How nice of Michael Lynche to open up tonight’s Results show. Wait, that wasn’t him? Oh, well, good thing Ryan Seacrest put the two guys together. Despite his weight loss, Ruben Studdard makes the other guy look like Not So Big Mike!
All kidding aside, and despite Ruben’s velvety Vandross voice, it was hopefully a moment for Mike to learn what not to be. We don’t need another Ruben—another fine singer with forgettable songs and a copycat sound. We need someone willing to be his own artist. And we more or less got that this week from Mike and other contestants. (Thought really, Mike, the My Pretty Ponytail has got to go!)
We were treated to some other examples of “what not to be” during the R&B oriented Top 10 Results Show. Stupidest comment of the night? Could it be Justin Bieber saying that Usher helped shape who he is as an artist? Well, of course! It all makes sense now, since both can’t sing a lick! For all of Usher’s good performance advice to the Idol contestants the other night, he was all flash without substance. His new single “OMG” stinks (did a 1st grader write those lyrics? Justin Bieber?), you could hear the auto-tune struggling to keep him sounding on pitch, and Will.i.am didn’t help much either midway through the song. But hey, the flame-pots were cool!
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American Idol - Top 10
Soul, Man!
Yawn, sorry friends. I’m gonna have to try keep this one shorter or at least less thought out than usual due to a late night movie review assignment and an early morning run through of the Top 10 festivities on Idol. And it was a mostly festive night for the dubious finalists as several of them (finally!) raised their game.
On the downside, I wish these kids would stop picking such old songs from such an extensive repertoire. It was R&B/soul night, not ‘60s Motown night, so why did only a few perform current selections? I also can’t say I like the new production decision to show the contestants backstage all mopey in the green room being consoled by their brothers and sisters after a bad performance. (Though admittedly, seeing them beam backstage after a good performance was nice.)
On the upside, Usher proved a pretty good mentor for the contenders. And here I was, all set to diss the guy since Idol seems to be picking mentors based on publicity stunts—Miley Cyrus promoting her new movie last week, Usher promoting a new album this week. But the 31-year-old R&B superstar managed to challenge—nothing too deep, but he clearly understood the singers’ strengths and weaknesses and gave smart performance suggestions that paid off for many of them, starting with…
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Amy Grant - Somewhere Down the Road
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Despite a successful career of more than 30 years, Amy Grant hasn’t exactly been productive over the last decade. Sure, there’s technically been a new release every year or two, but if you ignore the 1999 Christmas album, the pair of hymns projects, the live recording, and no less than three compilations, plus an EP with just a couple new songs, the Christian pop superstar has had only one purely original album to speak of in ten years: 2003’s Simple Things, which didn’t exactly reignite her career.
A full album of new material is long overdue from Amy Grant … and Somewhere Down the Road is not that album. Not with just five new songs combined with a couple previously unreleased tracks, a new recording of a classic, and four previously released favorites to fill it out. This is a piecemeal effort, though it’s intentionally so, collecting together songs that thematically reflect life’s journey with all of its highs and lows, revelations and mysteries. Somewhere may not be Grant’s best album, but somehow it still manages to hold together and inspire.
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Stellar Kart - Everything Is Different Now
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Listening to the latest from Stellar Kart is a reminder to all of us that some artists make music while others manufacture it. (If the difference isn’t immediately apparent, read on.)
I never consider it a good thing for a band to release a compilation just 4 years after their debut, especially with only 3 albums to show for it. Of course, the decision was surely all business/marketing on the part of Word Records, making it patently obvious through the 2009 release of Life Is Good: The Best of Stellar Kart that the band was seeking greener pastures—INO Records as it turns out. By making the label switch and boldly titling their fourth effort Everything Is Different Now, it would seem Stellar Kart is implying a new chapter involving some dramatic changes.
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The Arrows from South Africa
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I’m always looking for a new artist with a fresh sound, especially one that could spark the Christian music scene. A friend of mine (thanks Ed!) just turned me on to a group called The Arrows, hailing from South Africa. Never heard of them? No worries, neither had I until the other day . That’s because they’re only starting to make some waves on the indie circuit here in America. I could make comparisons to Feist, Ingrid Michaelson, and other quirky indie stalwarts with jazzy undertones, but frankly I think this is so much better. Maybe you’d best just hear them for yourselves in this fan-made YouTube video for their 6-minute song, “In the Words of Satan”—clever stuff, reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. (And yes, the duo has other faith-inspired songs—look for a review soon.) Video after the jump.
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American Idol Results - Top 11
Miles Away
Initially, I thought I was watching a horror show when I turned on the American Idol’sTop 11 Results Show. First there was the pair of young women in the audience with blood streaming down their faces. Turns out they were Siobhan’s friends expressing their support by dressing up as zombies, or as they called themselves, “Siobhan-bees.” Weird!!!
Then there was the unbelievably hokey group performance of Wham’s “Wake Me Up, Before You Go Go.” The horror!
Things more or less settled down after that for a Results Show pretty much devoid of any suspense. Guessing between the pairs of Lee and Casey vs. Tim and Paige? Puh-leeze, as if we would ever think America could get it that wrong. (Ahem … Lily, Katelyn, and Alex…) Later it came down to Andrew and Katie—yawn, send them both to the stools for all I care. If anything, I was a tad surprised that Andrew wasn’t the one, but it didn’t matter since Katie got an instant reprieve seconds after that.
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Brenton Brown - Adoration
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After listening to Adoration, the latest album from Brenton Brown, I can’t help feeling doubly frustrated for two completely different reasons.
On the one hand, Brown is a seasoned worship artist, previously mentored by the great Brian Doerksen (“Come Now Is the Time to Worship”), and every bit as skilled a songwriter as Matt Redman (“The Heart of Worship,” “Blessed Be the Name of the Lord”) and Tim Hughes (“Here I Am to Worship”), if not Chris Tomlin (“How Great Is Our God,” “Forever”). With accessible and melodic music that’s equally influenced by Brit pop and Americana, the South African born worship leader has written or co-written several of the best-known worship songs over the last decade. Yet for some reason, his name isn’t nearly as recognized as the aforementioned artists.
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