"Religious content, by its very faith-based nature, is passionate and fantastical, and, if not fashioned with a commensurate degree of care and artifice, the emotion exceeds the form . . ."The author's observation puts voice to what turns me off to not just Christian, but any moralizing music. I'm always just starting to groove when all of the sudden people are screaming, "Bombs over Baghdad!" or, I dunno, "War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" Sure, right, we need to be conscientious consumers, but painfully obvious sloganeering in art doesn't raise my activist ire, it makes me feel icky.
Peaches has the idea when, as a feminist anthem, she sings, "Shake yr dix, shake yr dix!" It's a holla that comes from the right place, yet doesn't weird you out with didactic overtones. Christian musicians could learn a lot from her.
Once Christian rock caught on, the trail having been sufficiently blazed by hardcore evangelicals like Keith Green, Rez, Degarmo & Key, Petra through Die Happy, kids in churches started realizing that they could have cool sounding bands and keep their church friends/not piss off their parents/get their moms to pony up for expensive PA systems and split sides (feel free to correct my assumptions about Aaron Sprinkle).
Then these kids, who had all signed to Tooth & Nail Records, got tired of playing in front of youth groups where the audience had listened to--at best--Whitecross, while they were delving into Nirvana and Mudhoney. Suddenly, though, Dakota Motor Co.'s guitarist got a job on MTV, and everyone started saying, "We're not a Christian band, we're Christians who are in a band," which makes sense to me.
However, I got it from Bryan Keen that Jason Martin of Starflyer 59--a very respectable Christian band--said the distinction is a cop-out, that "Christians who are in a band" ought to represent. I see his point when I argue with a girl who supports feminism but won't call herself a feminist. If you're doing good stuff for a cause, why not let yourself be a representative for that cause?
Why not? Well, in the case of Christian rock, it's hard to align oneself with a genre that is created in Stryper's image. So bands make the disclaimer that, "Yeah, we're Christian, but we're not stupid." Sadly, it's an understandable caveat, especially when these bands are dealing with the added challenge of writing lyrics that don't weird out their moms or their drinking buddies.
The Colemans deal with this challenge well, playing punk music that is danceable without falling into the trap of "pop punk," and without stopping the dance party by shrieking about God's love or the dangers of premarital sex. They give us lines like, "I wanna be numb," and "I wanna be paralyzed," which are coolly close to Ramone's lyrics.
The song that motivated me to write about them is called "Hold On," and at first I thought it was just a rockin' riff of general encouragement, you know, "Life is hard, but hold on," but it's clearly about something more, something a little too much. It's a story about Dan and Donna, who are from a small town, who got pregnant, who got married, who fought, who worked through it, who now have a beautiful relationship. The idea is crafted well for the song, starting in medias res and fitting together with a nice musicality.
So the bit that makes me feel weird is the line that says, "He met her before he met Jesus," as if the baby situation would have been avoided if Dan had been a Christian. But if they hadn't become pregnant, would they have grown together so beautifully? The line gives the song not just a bit that old time Christian presumptuousness, but also a bit of inanity.
The idea of the song, and of the Colemans, is a good one nonetheless. Under the auspices of a Christian band, they tell their listeners to keep the faith, to be cool, to struggle. I don't know why ideas like that have to be set aside into a separate market, though.