'The musical reimaging involved in Over the Rhine’s reinterpretations of hymns takes them into the space that Brueggemann defines as new orientation, while the sounds and, in some cases, content of the hymns chosen by Steffan and Ghostwriter are more in the realm of his disorientation category. The music making of Lleuwen Steffan, Ghostwriter and Over the Rhine takes us to places not commonly accessed by the music used in many church services.'
My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.
My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.
My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.
This is the music, in no particular order, that I've most enjoyed listening to in 2019:
Kiwanuka by Michael Kiwanuka - 'Kiwanuka is a contemplative song cycle intended to be listened to in one extended sitting ... At the core is Kiwanuka’s inner battle between anxiety, self-doubt, spirituality and wisdom, which is then set against racism and rueful glances at the state of the world ... for all its melancholy, Kiwanuka is never downbeat. There are moments – such as the “Time is the healer” gospel choir in I’ve Been Dazed, or hopeful closer Light – when positivity bursts through with such dazzling effect you want to cheer. Kiwanuka is a bold, expansive, heartfelt, sublime album. He’s snuck in at the final whistle, but surely this is among the decade’s best.'
Ghosteen by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - 'Ghosteen drips melody like the permanent rain. It oozes emotion from a heavy heart. It embraces the frailty of the human soul. It’s full of poetry and images that switch sometimes from the time honoured embrace of Elvis and Jesus and the icons and articles of faith whether they are god or rock n roll to a yearning deeply soulful of a very personal heartbreak with a powerful honesty and lyrical nakedness reflecting a genuine darkness and intimate honesty that is a step deeper into the personal and the intimate that is compelling and hypnotic and with an almost ambient atmospheric music to match.'
Thanks for the Dance by Leonard Cohen - Thanks for the Dance 'Opener Happens to the Heart reflects on [Leonard Cohen's] career with trademark humility: “I was always working steady, I never called it art. I got my shit together, meeting Christ and reading Marx” ... Like those of Marvin Gaye and Prince, Cohen’s oeuvre sought to reconcile the spiritual and the sensual, which both feature heavily again ... As the pace slows to a transcendent crawl and backing vocals form a heavenly choir, The Hills mocks his ageing body (“The system is shot / I’m living on pills”) and the stunning The Goal finds him “almost alive” and “settling accounts of the soul”. The last poem he recorded, Listen to the Hummingbird, implores us to find beauty in God and butterflies: “Don’t listen to me.” And, finally, there is a vast, empty silence, and he is gone.'
We Get By by Mavis Staples - 'Over half a century after her voice was at the forefront of America’s civil rights era, Mavis Staples is still crying out for Change. The bluesy backbeat opening track of her 12th studio album confronts recent shootings in the US before she concludes, brilliantly, “What good is freedom if we haven’t learned to be free?”... It’s not hard to guess the subject of such pointed lines such as “Trouble in the land. We can’t trust that man.” Elsewhere, there are songs of loss, need, faith and devotion.'
Hotel Last Resort by Violent Femmes - 'More than three decades on from their 1983 debut, Violent Femmes have dished up another audio delight of front-porch folk ... The band’s juvenile charisma imbues every lyric, from a biblical satire in Adam Was a Man to humble love song Everlasting You, but Paris to Sleep is the heartbreaking hero: “Losing lost love is not worth losing for.” Deeply intuitive with a sprinkle of absurdity, the Violent Femmes’ new recipe is pure joy.'
Jaimie by Brittany Howard - 'Jaime is named after Howard’s sister, who taught her to play piano and died of cancer when she was eight years old – but “the record is not about her”, she said in a recent interview. “It’s about me.” A platter of psychy soul, gospel and funk, with melodies that tap and jitter like Morse code or pour out like silky caramel, Jaime is about tragedy, sexuality, religion, racism and poverty – all things with which Howard is uncomfortably familiar.'
Love & Revelation by Over The Rhine - 'Love & Revelation, an album of loping ballads and probing lyricism that addresses grief, loss and what it means to be an American in a conflicted country. “Let You Down” is a devastating promise to never abandon someone, with the understanding that inevitably they will do just that. “Betting on the Muse,” inspired by the writer Charles Bukowski, wrestles with finding a life’s second act after a person peaks. And “Los Lunas” is a haunting poem about a tearful drive to reckon with saying goodbye ... “The very first words you hear on the project are ‘I cried,'” says Detweiler, citing the opening lyric. “When I told my 87-year-old mother about it, she said that sounds like the Psalms.” But Love & Revelation, and the band itself, is ultimately about restoration and perseverance.'
High as Hope by Florence + the Machine - 'Welch reinforces her magnificent emoting with contemplative, intimate lyrics; the musician beckons people into her interior world with no hesitation and no cushion. “The show was ending, and I had started to crack,” Welch trills to open the album, her voice dominant above barely perceptible chords. “Woke up in Chicago and the sky turned black.” Despite that initial ominous note, High As Hope soon evolves into a treatise on what it means to embrace second chances, while trusting other people—and, more important, yourself. The cello-burnished “100 Years” exhibits a healthier approach to love and faith (“Give me arms to pray with instead of ones that hold too tightly”) while “Grace,” written as a mea culpa to Welch’s younger sister, asks forgiveness for youthful indiscretions.'
Western Skies by Bruce Springsteen - 'Western Stars ... is populated by characters past their best – the title track’s fading actor, reduced to hawking Viagra on TV and retelling his stories for anyone who’ll buy him a drink; Drive Fast’s injured stuntman recalling his youthful recklessness, the failed songwriter of Somewhere North of Nashville and the guy glumly surveying the boarded-up site of an old tryst on Moonlight Motel – all of them ruminating on how things have changed, not just for the worse, but in ways none of them anticipated.'
Three Chords and the Truth by Van Morrison - 'There’s a warmth here that recalls his ’90s highwater marks, Hymns to the Silence and The Healing Game, and connects even farther back in time to 1971’s Tupelo Honey, which balanced the charms of domesticity with R&B raves ... “It’s called ‘the flow,’” Morrison said in a recent interview, detailing his optimal conditions for making music. “I don’t know the mechanics of how that works. I just know when I’m in it.” “The flow” makes Three Chords and The Truth a deeply pleasurable listen, but it’s the moments where Morrison sounds less settled that carry the most weight. The album’s third song, “Dark Night of the Soul,” never wanders as far out as epics like “Madame George” and “Listen to the Lion,” nor does it match spaced-out gloss of his ’80s albums with trumpeter Mark Isham, but it’s gripped by the same existential fervor. Its mellow heat has a lot in common with 1997’s “Rough God Goes Riding,” a gentle midtempo cut with apocalyptic visions hiding in plain sight. Revisiting the 16th-century Christian mystic St. John of the Cross’ poem about the unknowability of God, one he’s sung about a number of times before, Morrison showcases the way his twilight years haven’t dimmed his yearning for growth, his desire for a deeper understanding.'
"try to write music that in little ways helps to heal the wounds that life has dealt us or the wounds we’ve dealt ourselves. We try to write songs that can hum joyfully at the stars when something good goes down. We try to write tunes capable of whispering to a sleeping child that in spite of everything, somehow, all is well. We try to write words that help us learn to tell the truth to ourselves and others."
The holy interpenetrates our world and affects it but often we are not looking all that close and cannot see, so we need artists like Over The Rhine to create little epiphanies that reveal Christ for us in the ordinary experiences of life; their favourite times of light!
Tonight they sang my all-time favourite Over The Rhine song Jesus in New Orleans which notes that you never know just what on earth you'll find in the face of a stranger or in the dark and weary corners of a mind because, here and there, when you least expect it, you can see the Saviour's face. In their story of meeting a stranger in a bar in New Orleans in whose face and words they see something of Christ the holy is interpenetrating their world, and ours, and affecting it. "Ain't it crazy, they suggest, "what's revealed when you’re not looking all that close."
Among their favourite broken people is Christ, who's still their "favourite loser / Falling for the entire human race." "Ain't it crazy / How we put to death the ones we need the most."
An evening full of highlights - you can't have too many - but what I'll remember most is the question they pose in Earthbound Love Song:
"Is heaven a place you fly off to When the day is done? Or do you work right here On an earthbound love song?"
"Low does a rare thing in today's indie-rock milieu by refusing to survive on cynicism and worldliness alone. Whether or not one ascribes to their beliefs, the heartfelt and reverential beauty of their sound and lyrics are perfect for the holiday season. Christmas is a rich treat in a tiny package." (www.allmusic.com)
Blood Oranges in the Snow is Ohio-based folk duo Over The Rhine's third seasonal effort following 1996’s The Darkest Night Of The Year and 2006’s Snow Angels. "The trend isn’t surprising considering Over The Rhine’s husband-and-wife core, Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist, so often employ the strings and bells of pristine acoustic folk—tones and styles ideally suited for holiday music. Still, it’s not all “Silent Night.” The group has dubbed their record “Reality Christmas” for exploring what they say are nuanced songs reconciling the joy and peace of Christmas-time with the dangers of a violent world." (Paste Magazine)
Here are the 10 albums (in no particular order) that I've got hold of and
enjoyed the most in 2013: The Invisible Way - Low: Alan Sparhawk has said that "Music in general has
been the fiber of my faith from the beginning. Everything I know about God was
taught to me in songs & the spiritual milestones of my life have almost
always been musical experiences. I think the process of writing songs has helped
me learn to listen to the spirit, which then testifies of Christ & His
Father." 'Holy Ghost' returns the favour, along with the rest of this inspirational album. One True Vine by Mavis Staples: "From album opener 'Holy Ghost' (Alan Sparhawk), to the new [Jeff] Tweedy composition 'Jesus Wept,' the gravity in Staples' voice is transfixing, heavy with burdens but blessed with the promise of true redemption that shines through on the deft and driving 'Far Celestial Shore' (Nick Lowe), Can You Get To That' (Funkadelic), and Pops Staples' uplifting 'I Like The Things About Me.'" Moyshe Mcstiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart by C.O.B.: "It's Middle Eastern, it's contemplative and it's about quite serious subjects." It has a "sad, faintly religious atmosphere" supplemented by C.O.B.'s innovative use of drones created through their invention of the dulcitar. Mick Bennett is a poet with an "amazingly powerful voice" who "contributed a huge amount to the atmosphere and spirituality of C.O.B.'s music." Jericho Road by Eric Bibb: “The title refers to the road between Jerusalem and Jericho where the Good Samaritan, a traveler of a despised race, stopped to help a stranger in need after better-off religious leaders had passed by and done nothing. On April 3, 1968, the night before his death, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King urged us to follow the example of the Good Samaritan, saying: ‘Ultimately, you cannot save yourself without saving others.’ If this record has a theme, that’s it in a nutshell: have a heart.” Trouble Came Looking by Ricky
Ross is a modern Celtic folk album written as the wheels started to fall off the economy. On the album Ricky captures the sense of helplessness we all felt as governments signed off billions to protect the banks and institutions, and then sat back and watched as normal people lost everything. Meet Me At The Edge Of The World - Over The Rhine: Linford Detweiler and Karen Bergquist
say: "... we try to write music that in little ways helps to heal the wounds
that life has dealt us or the wounds we’ve dealt ourselves. We try to write
songs that can hum joyfully at the stars when something good goes down. We try
to write tunes capable of whispering to a sleeping child that in spite of
everything, somehow, all is well. We try to write words that help us learn to
tell the truth to ourselves and others." Monkey
Minds In The Devil’s Time by Steve Mason, with a title referring to the Buddhist term
for an easily distracted brain, " is air punching, proletariat mobilizing, insurrection-pop of the highest calibre." "Lonely soars with melancholic-gospel-ennui, Oh My Lord is Sweet Home Alabama on a Bontempi keyboard, and Fight Them Back – arguably Mason’s finest piece of song-smithery since Dry the Rain." (BBC Review) The Relatives’ sound bridges
the gap between traditional Gospel, Soul and Psychedelia. In the early 1970’s,
they recorded three obscure singles and a previously unreleased session—all of
which are compiled on the acclaimed 2009 anthology, Don’t Let Me Fall.
The release of the anthology brought The Relatives back together as a band,
planting the seeds for their 2013 Yep Roc release, The Electric Word. The Memory Of
GracebyThe Children is a volume of unconventional spiritual songs dedicated to the
Most High; a poetry and music rooted in English lyrical ballads; in Bob Dylan, and the sons and daughters
of Bob; in Ezekiel, Matthew and the Psalms; in cultural reggae and the gospel
blues. Bill Fay's classic Time Of The Last
Persecution displays empathy in the face of apocalypse. Fay's songs are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual
imagery and insights (both whimsical and surreal bearing comparison with Syd Barrett and Nick Drake) delivered with gravity and
grace. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C.O.B. - Solomon's Song.
One of the great pleasures of 2012 for me was discovering the music of Bill Fay through Life
is People.
Fay's songs are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual
imagery and insights (both whimsical and surreal bearing comparison with Syd Barrett and Nick Drake) delivered with gravity and grace. 'Cosmic Concerto (Life Is
People)' is a highlight from a collection of stand-out tracks; a celebration of
the miracle of ordinary life, the infinite variation in each human face, which
stirs his soul. I'm currently absorbing his classic Time Of The Last Persecution; empathy in the face of apocalypse. Humility seems to run throughout his music; both in his low-key, almost hesitant and weathered delivery and in lyrics such as "The never ending happening / Of what's to be and
what has been / Just to be a part of it / Is astonishing to me" ('The Never
Ending Happening') and "I don't ask much, for myself / But for the one's I
love" ('Thank You Lord').
Following on from that discovery, here are some other stunning songwriters who, like Fay, have not achieved the attention that their work actually merits:
Michael Been, The Call's singer/songwriter, was born in Oklahoma City but migrated to California before forming The Call with Scott Musik. Sin and salvation are staples of the diet that The Call served up. Been thought that every fault in the world was within him and said that he had had "hundreds of born-again experiences" needing them because he was dead a lot of the time: "I believe in truth. Whatever is necessary for a person to experience to find the rock bottom, to know the darkness of his life, that's right. A lot of our music is confrontational, it deals with the dark side of life because that teaches us something." Red Moon and Reconciled represent the peak of The Call's work combining literate lyrics with powerful anthems and genuinely encompassing despair, ecstasy and the stages in between.
T. Bone Burnett creates ridiculous satirical morality tales - the marijuana smoking computer operator paying through the nose for free love (The Sixties), the millionaire buying culture in massive fashionable chunks (A Ridiculous Man) and the émigrés selling soft sentiment and soft porn to children (Hefner and Disney). Burnett knows though that judgements are precarious - that what we think we know and what we actually know are often in opposition - so he balances his tales on the jerky, anxious, angular rhythms of his rock 'n' country hybrid, almost like stiltwalking.
Peter Case neatly summed up the dual strands of American music when he wrote in the sleeve notes toPeter Case that he didn't know any songs about America but that these songs were about "sin and salvation". Like Bruce Springsteen, Case has an ability to speak in the voice of those people struggling for a nickel, shuffling for a dime who find themselves caught in relationships that have ensnared them. Theirs is the voice of hope deferred - to someone else (Turning Blue), and the voice of harsh experience - "You don't know it but it's plain to see/You can't tell when you're workin' for your enemy" (Workin' For The Enemy). His eye for colourful detail authenticates his character's tales and adds extra layers of meaning - "So we made love in that place out in back/The last time that we took off our clothes/We took other things and took more than that/I took off with my clothes in a sack and I froze"
Rated "rock’s last great obscurity" by Melody Maker Bruce Cockburn has quietly made a living as a singer/songwriter since 1970 and his self-titled debut while never going all out for fame and fortune. As literate a guitarist as he is a lyricist he fuses sparklingly complex jazz/rock rhythms with metaphor loaded lyricism, as often spoken as sung – "sometimes things don’t easily reduce to rhyming couplets". Forty years plus of consistent, intelligent exploration of the personal, political and spiritual, often within the same song, is no mean achievement. When combined with both an honesty about his own relationship and faith frailties and a willingness to campaign with the likes of Oxfam raging against US and IMF oppression in the two-thirds world, you have to give the man respect. In 1992 in a song, Closer to the Light, written following the death of Mark Heard, Cockburn wrote the line - "There you go/Swimming deeper into mystery" – which seemed to sum the direction in which Cockburn’s work has headed over the course of his long career.
Like Gordan Gano of the Violent Femmes, David Eugene Edwards has a preacher in the family - in Edwards case, his Nazarene preacher Grandfather. Edward's songs not only oscillate around the twin poles of sin and salvation but use the language of the King James version as they do so. If any current music fully inhabits the Southern mindset then surely it is this. 16 Horsepower released their debut album Sackcloth 'N' Ashes in 1995 and, after the eventual demise of 16 Horsepower, DEE continued in similar vein with Woven Hand. As he has said: 'The myths of our country are in the songs. The untold stories and
gaps in history books are in the songs – our recollection is preserved in this
music. Those songs as well as the stories that my parents told me, the bible and
the books I read, all this is the foundation of my imagination of America.'
Formed in 1982 and discovered by Chrissie Hynde busking outside a Pretender's gig, the Violent Femmes were among the first to combine punk's frenzy with country's resignation and gospel's jubilation. That full on clash of contradiction is the raison d'etre of the band (and something they were into long before the idea featured in U2's third coming). "That's the thing about this band," said Gordon Gano their singer/songwriter, "in the songs, in the whole performance of them, there's all different levels of total contradiction going on at the same moment where we are serious and as far from being serious as possible, it's important and also far away from being important". It's also part of the "American tradition" - "Country music has a long tradition of singing horrible songs about drinking and sinning and then doing some sincere gospel numbers". This is where 'Country Death Song' gets its dark inspiration from - "I even think 'Country Death Song' is happy because all the awfulness of the song, it came out of my love for country music and I feel happy when I sing it. I must have a different perspective".
Mark Heard wrote, in 'I Just Wanna Get Warm', "The mouths of the best poets speak but a few words/Then lay down, stone cold, in forgotten fields" - in retrospect that seems prophetic. Just a glimpse into the soul of a man known by so few and yet so deeply missed by so many. The liner notes from the tribute album say it best: "Mark Heard left behind a legacy of music that will undoubtedly impact the lives of many, just as he has impacted the lives of the artists who participated in Strong Hand of Love. The testimony of his brilliance as a poet and artist is undeniably evident throughout this inspiring tribute."
Los Angeles group Love were, in the words of David Fricke, 'the bi-racial folk-rock pirates who made Love and Da Capo in 1966, then the silken psychedelia of Forever Changes in 1967.' 'Although Arthur Lee was the main writer, [Bryan] MacLean contributed some fine songs, including Orange Skies, Old Man and the haunting Alone Again Or, with its flamenco-style guitar and dramatic trumpet flourishes.' ifyoubelieveinis a collection of MacLean's music written when he was in the band and written with Love in mind. 'After an aborted attempt at a solo career ... [MacLean]joined a Christian Fellowship Church called the Vineyard ... During Friday night Bible stints [MacLean] took the concert part of the session and was so amazed at the reaction he gradually assembled a catalogue of his Christian songs.' Taken from the Latin and literally meaning 'within the walls', Intra Muros is the album of "spooky" Christian music MacLean was completing at the time of his death. Due to 'the great strength of songs like the amazing Love Grows In Me and My Eyes Are Open', Intra Muros 'stands as fine testament to the ability of a great songwriter.'
Michael McDermott's trademark embrace is "of faith and hope in the face of adversity." His lyrics are "uniquely evocative" as he "sings in poetry", his tunes being "literate story-songs." Stephen King wrote of him: “Michael McDermott is one of the best songwriters in the world and possibly the greatest undiscovered rock ‘n’ roll talent of the last 20 years.” In “Mess of Things,” McDermott sings, “the trouble with trouble is that it sometimes sticks/plays tricks with your mind while it gets its kicks/And slowly there’s a momentum shift/And the weight becomes too great to lift.” McDermott sings about a world where “everybody is bleeding, or everybody is filled with doubt,” and yet he sings, “say the word/And I shall be healed.”
'After the Flood' from Lone Justice's debut album neatly fits Maria McKee's description of country music - "originally Country music was very raw and very spiritual and very gut-level". With a half brother (Bryan MacLean) from seminal 60s LA band Love and Victoria Williams as a next-door neighbour growing up ("she taught me my first guitar chords", McKee has said and they sang briefly together before their separate careers took off), the emphasis was always likely to be on the raw, spiritual and gut-level rather than the country aspect of the definition. By the time McKee recorded her second solo album You Gotta Sin To Get Saved, with a band that included Jayhawks, Gary Louris and Mark Olson (then Williams' husband), she felt she was standing still, merely reprising her work with Lone Justice. She responded by recording the critically acclaimed album Life Is Sweet. Here she felt her songwriting becoming "crystal and dramatic ... this larger-than-life grandiose thing, sort of riding the fine line of bad taste". Grunge based and coruscating on tracks like 'Scarlover', Life is Sweet sounds a far cry from the cow-punk of Lone Justice but it remains "very raw and very spiritual and very gut-level". At the end of the day that's what matters.
Julie Miller writes nakedly emotional songs which in their aching beauty combine perseverance and faith with sorrow and heartache. Her songs have featured in her solo work, her husband Buddy Miller's solo albums and on several jointly recorded albums. An early song reflecting on the crucifixion asked, 'How can you say No to this man?' The same question can be asked of Miller's confessional work - how can you say no to the grace and openness found therein?
Neal Morse is a US prog rocker who first
made his mark in the band Spock’s Beard and then formed the prog-rock supergroup
Transatlantic. Following his conversion to Christianity in 2000, he left both
bands and has since produced a substantial and well-regarded body of solo work
exploring different aspects of his faith. His fourth solo album
Sola Scriptura, across four tracks and 76 minutes (this is prog
rock we’re talking here!), tells the story of Martin Luther and the Reformation.
Morse says, “The point of it is to point us … toward the light of God's truth
which is laid out wonderfully before us in the scriptures. Of course, this is a
lofty goal for a mere CD, but, with God anything is possible!”
Over The Rhine'sLinford Detweiler and Karen Bergquist say: "... we try to write music that in little ways helps to heal the wounds that life has dealt us or the wounds we’ve dealt ourselves. We try to write songs that can hum joyfully at the stars when something good goes down. We try to write tunes capable of whispering to a sleeping child that in spite of everything, somehow, all is well. We try to write words that help us learn to tell the truth to ourselves and others." “We’re really only reflecting what we’ve already heard,” Detweiler explains, “a mix of all the music we grew up with and were drawn to: old gospel hymns, the country and western music on WWVA, the rock and roll records the kids at school passed around, the symphonic music that my father brought home, the jazz musicians we discovered in college, the Great American Songbook performers that Karin’s mother loved, and of course the various singer-songwriters that eventually knocked the roof off our world. But when this music is reflected back to the listener through the filter of our own particular lives, hopefully it becomes a much different experience (maybe even somewhat unique) for those with ears to hear.”
The Innocence Mission hail from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and own up to a "religious upbringing where our parents lived out their faith rather than evangelised". They formed in 1982 and initially attracted the support of Joni Mitchell and her then husband, Larry Klien. Mitchell called Karen Peris "one of the most interesting singer/songwriters around at the moment", while Klien produced their first two albums (The Innocence Mission and Umbrella). Peris summed up the band's approach when she said "I saw something in a book Float Planes. In the beginning there's a quote from a hymn that said, "When I die hallelujah! Bye bye I'll fly away ..." and that's exactly what I think we want to say." In 'Wonder of Birds', from the first album, they talk of building homes with windows to fly through and this is an apt description of their songs. 'Bright As Yellow' for example, from their third album Glow, is a joyful celebration of that open-handed, open-hearted approach to life, as exemplified by Peris's mother. Peris writes conversational songs that draw significance from the everyday while the band on the earliest albums set these to a swirling, chiming, transcendent version of the 'big' music.
Leslie Phillips sang in Sunday School with Maria McKee and recorded several albums for the CCM label Word before a name change to Sam, a marriage to T-Bone Burnett and a series of critically acclaimed albums often produced by Burnett. Phillips combines a cool pop sensibility with razor-sharp lyrics. A mix that finds her ethereal voice, tinged with melancholy, soaring over like a seagull skimming waves.
Jim White inhabits a world where the natural and supernatural are intertwined and where the ordinary slips seamlessly into the extraordinary. White says in 'Still Waters', "Well, don't you know there are projects for the dead and projects for the living?/Though I must confess sometimes I get confused by that distinction". White's characters have ghosts in their homes, curse ships which promptly sink and serenade the dying ('Still Waters').
Victoria Williams has a naive, folky style which uses images and characters that would not be out of place in a painting by Marc Chagall. This style, however, conceals a great subtlety of approach and a willingness to experiment with musical form in a similar to fashion to that of Van Morrison. Williams builds songs that are not simply a melody running through verses and chorus but which, in tandem with the lyrics, veer off in directions that are consistent with the emotional ebb and flow of the song as a whole. She sees the divine through the local, the ordinary, the common-place, and the natural finding the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing through the building of a raft and duets with a fellow-traveller on the New York underground ('Holy Spirit').
I write more about some of the above in my co-authored book 'The Secret Chord'.
I've just finished reading Faith, Hope and Poetry by Malcolm Guite which is about transfigured vision and am just beginning to read David Dark's book about Everyday Apocalypse. Each are different sides of the same coin; the coin in question being epiphany understood as a moment of revelation.
Guite writes that:
"sometimes ... the mirror of poetry does more than reflect what we have already seen. Sometimes that mirror becomes a window, a window into the mystery which is both in and beyond nature, a 'casement opening on perilous seas'. From that window sometimes shines a more than earthly that suddenly transforms, transfigures all the earthly things it falls upon. Through that window, when it is opened for us by the poet's art, we catch a glimpse of that 'Beauty always ancient always new', who made and kindled our imagination in the beginning and whose love draws us beyond the world."
It is those moments of transfiguration, he writes, "those moments when the mirror a poem holds up becomes a window into the Divine," which are the subject of his book.
Dark, by contrast, writes that:
"We apparently have the word "apocalypse" all wrong. In its root meaning, it's not about destruction or fortune-telling; it's about revealing. It's what James Joyce calls an epiphany - the moment you realize that all your so-called love for the young lady, all your professions, all your dreams, and all your efforts to get her to notice you were the exercise of an unkind and obsessive vanity. It wasn't about her at all. It was all about you. The real world, within which you've lived and moved and had your being, has unveiled itself. It's starting to come to you. You aren't who you made yourself out to be. An apocalypse has just occurred, or a revelation, if you prefer."
Two contrasting revelations but both meeting the requirements for an epiphany. James Joyce set out the requirements or conditions for an epiphany in Stephen Hero(the early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) where he writes:
"By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual transformation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phrase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they are the most delicate and evanescent of moments ...
... First, we recognize that the object is one integral thing, then we recognize that it is an organized composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognize that it is that thing, which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany."
This description of epiphany seems more aligned with Guite's sense of transfigured vision than it does of Dark's everyday apocalypse, although it is Dark who claims Joycean understanding. On the one hand this is because Joyce draws heavily on theology for his understanding of epiphany. He wrote, for instance, of the work that would become Dublinersas being "a series of epicleti." This term Terence Brown notes, "derives from the Greek Orthodox liturgy and refers to the moment in the sacrifice of the Mass when the bread and the wine are transformed by the Holy Ghost into the body and blood of Christ." It is at this moment of consecration that "the everyday realities of bread and wine are charged with spiritual significance." Similarly, the literal meaning of epiphany is manifestation but, in the Church calendar the Feast of Epiphany commemorates the manifestation of Christ's divinity to the Magi. Bernard Richards notes that with this definition Joyce "comes close to the aesthetics of Gerard Manley Hopkins and his philosophy of haeccitas ('thisness')." Richards also notes that, "For centuries writers and mystics have experienced sudden insights that seem detached from the flow of everyday perception. He cites William Wordsworth'sThe Prelude and Dante Gabriel Rossetti'sSudden Light as examples, before stating that often these epiphanies "have been on a borderline between the secular and the religious: what has been revealed in the mystical moment has been a sense of God, of the whole shape of the universe, of the unity of all created things."
On the other hand, Dark is right in stating that Joyce's use of epiphanies in his work was more to do with everyday apocalypse than with transfigured vision. Francesca Valente writes that:
"Joyce himself confirmed this in a letter of July 1904 to Curran, where he said that he intended Dubliners "to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city" (Joyce, Letters 55). Joyce therefore conceived this work as a sequence of "fifteen epiphanies"-as he stated in a letter dated February 8, 1903 to Stanislaus (Ellmann, James Joyce 125)-which were written to let Irish people take "one good look at themselves in his nicely polished looking-glass" (Joyce, Letters 63-64). What emerges from these words is that both the fictional characters of the tales and the readers are meant to undergo an epiphanic confrontation."
The two sides of the coin are, to some extent, combined in the stories of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy (Dark says that O'Connor "is perhaps the best example of how the Yes and the No can coincide"). Percy writes about there being two stages in non-Christian audiences becoming aware of grace. First, there is an experience of awakening in which a character in a novel (and through that character, the audience) sees the inadequacy of the life that he or she has been leading. This is a moment of epiphany or revelation about themselves; an everyday apocalypse in which they either realise their depravity or their potential for grace. Thinking along similar lines O’Connor wrote that “the novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural.” Such an experience may then lead on to the second stage of hearing and responding to the grace of God in Christ (an epiphany of transfigured vision).
In the American South, there is a tradition of Appalachian country death songs; gothic backwoods ballads of mortality and disaster. The Violent Femmes took that tradition and used it in Country Death Song to confront their audience with an epiphany of the reality, ugliness and consequences of sin. They told a story in which the central character acts in a way that all of us recognise as sinful and then spoke about the reality of hell as a consequence of what he that did. This song is, therefore, an example of what Flannery O’Conner was talking about when she wrote that “the novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural.” In that situation she said, you have to make your vision apparent by shock and that is what the Violent Femmes did.
In her novels Flannery O’Connor also wrote about the way in which the holy interpenetrates this world and affects it. St Paul, in Philippians, tells to go through life with an attitude of looking out for things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely and honourable. He expects us to find these things in our ordinary lives, if we look for them. Over The Rhine say in the song Jesus in New Orleans that you never know just what on earth you'll find in the face of a stranger or in the dark and weary corners of a mind because, here and there, when you least expect it, you can see the Saviour's face. In their story of meeting a stranger in a bar in New Orleans in whose face and words they see something of Christ the holy is interpenetrating their world, and ours, and affecting it. In this way Over The Rhine created an epiphany that reveals Christ for us in the ordinary experiences of life.
American Literature and American Music frequently oscillate between epiphanies of grace and epiphanies of terror. Compare and contrast Emily Dickinson and Flannery O'Connor, for example, Victoria Williams and Jim White, The Innocence Mission and Sixteen Horsepower. Fear and threat on the one hand, mystery and enamour on the other - the twin poles of American music (see my post here). Legends, bibles, plagues, vegetables and death, roses growing out of people's brains, lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels - they're all in the mix. Epiphanies are songs of sin and salvation as sung by the wild, unshod, soot-covered orphans of God.
"Let's think of the steeple and the gargoyle. The steeple is this beautiful thing reaching up into the sky admitting as it were, its own inadequacy - attempting something utterly impossible - to climb to heaven through a steeple. The gargoyle is this little man grinning and laughing at the absurd behaviour of men on earth, and those two things both built into this building to the glory of God ... [The gargoyle is] laughing at the inadequacy of man, the pretensions of man, the absolute preposterous gap - disparity - between his aspirations and his performance, which is the eternal comedy of human life. It will be so until the end of time you see ... Mystical ecstasy and laughter are the two great delights of living, and saints and clowns their purveyors, the only two categories of human being who can be relied on to tell the truth; hence, steeples and gargoyles side by side on the great cathedrals."
"... With an eye on musical tradition and lyrics riffing on poets such as W.H. Auden and Stephen Crane, Dylan’s songs are literate. They’re also noticeably theological, as is evident again on his second solo effort, Women and Country ... On "Holy Rollers for Love," the album’s strongest indictment of war, the song’s narrator places the blame solely on humanity’s free will: "The devil himself would be puzzled to give / Any reasons for sinking his fingers in." The song ends with a twist: "Glory glory hallelujah be warned / God is still marching, still raising his sword." Given his subject matter, Dylan’s work remains hopeful. "I think He [God] wants us to have every opportunity available to achieve good things," he said in a recent NPR interview. "To have hope you’re going to have to imagine that there’s something behind the curtain." Women and Country is a beautiful and understated slow-grower. For listeners and critics duly attentive, its muted Americana facilitates contemplation and quiet reverie. Produced by T Bone Burnett, the album boasts a wealth of performers, including Marc Ribot (guitar), David Mansfield (fiddle), Jay Bellerose (drums), Dennis Crouch (acoustic bass), a brass section led by Darrell Leonard (trumpet), and the backing vocals of indie sirens, Neko Case and Kelly Hogan."
ImageUpdate also includes details of how to directly support the next Over The Rhine album as, rather than looking to a record company to front the money, Over the Rhine is appealing directly to the people who care about their music to help fund the project up front. For $15, you can help them "blow the seams out of the songs" with Joe Henry, and ensure that you’ll receive your copy of the resulting record a month in advance. To read more about the new record, click here; and if you’re sold on the project, click here to buy in.
One tradition that he has highlighted has been the Appalachian country death songs; gothic backwoods ballads of mortality and disaster. The Violent Femmes are one band that have taken this tradition and who have used it to confront their audience with the reality of sin. In the words of Flannery O’Connor: “to the hard of hearing you shout and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
At one point in his career, T. Bone Burnett found that his songs critiquing society were being misunderstood by people who thought he was simply pointing the finger at others. Because he believed that any discussion of morality has to begin with oneself he switched many of his songs from the second to the first person. So, instead of singing, “He couldn’t help but notice her,” he would now sing, “I couldn’t help but notice her.” To reinforce the point he later wrote a song entitled The Criminal Under My Own Hat. David Eugene Edwards, lead singer with Sixteen Horsepower, sums up this approach when he says that his songs are all about the fact that we are all in trouble, that we all need a Saviour.
In her novels Flannery O’Connor also wrote about the way in which the holy interpenetrates this world and affects it and the group of musicians we are considering has also made use of this way of communicating faith. In her song Holy Spirit, Victoria Williams writes about experiencing the Holy Spirit in very ordinary situations and through very ordinary people. For Victoria Williams, the Holy Spirit is what makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes your heart go ping and it can be found anywhere - on a mountain top, ‘neath the stars, in a churchyard and even in some bars. Another band finding the Spirit or face of Jesus in a bar are Over The Rhine.
You never know just what on earth you'll find in the faces of a stranger or in the dark and weary corners of a mind because, here and there, when you least expect it you can see the Saviour's face. The holy interpenetrates our world and affects it but often we are not looking all that close and cannot see, so artists like Victoria Williams, Over The Rhine and Flannery O’Connor create little epiphanies that reveal Christ for us in the ordinary experiences of life.
How do you think non-Christians hearing these songs from mainstream bands on mainstream record labels would respond to them?
