An Atheist's Guide to Christian Rock

[jedwardkeyes]

Long Story Short

So, I don't know when this Tumblr is coming back. I got an amazing new job, I'm getting married, and I've got a second apartment move coming up in six months. I really want to pick this back up because I loved writing it, I just cannot find the time right now. I'll be back, it just might be a while.

[jedwardkeyes]

Atheist’s Guide Returns the Week of January 4, 2016

Just taking a little break for the holidays!

[jedwardkeyes]

As a former Christian myself, in addition to having written for HRS/Syndicate and hosting a local ACM radio show back in the day, your thoughts, reflections, and continued admiration for these great works resonates greatly with me. What makes albums like Darn Floor Big Bite, Dig, Circle Slide, Love Gift, etc work is they speak to universal truths of the human condition that aren't just relegated to the cloistered environs from which they came. Thanks for your insights, I look forward to more.

Hey, thanks so much for this. I was a huge, huge fan of HRS back in the day. And you completely nailed one of my main reasons for doing this site — the themes of a lot of these records speak to so much more than a niche subculture, and it’s been a lot of fun digging back into them. Thanks for dropping a line!

[jedwardkeyes]

Is it possible to comment on individual blog posts? Would you like to hear about other's memories and stories of these albums? Almost every one of the albums you talk about here, triggers so many thoughts, memories or stories from my life. I would love to share them if you'd like to hear them, but I completely understand if you don't. Either way, thanks for writing this. I confess I was skeptical at first, but I really appreciate your obviously genuine appreciation for this music.

It might be! But I'm not sure how! Anyone who wants to can just share a story in a message and I'll post 'em (as long as they're not offensive!)Thanks for writing!

[jedwardkeyes]

Hi! I like this project a lot. Have you heard Otis G Johnson's "Everything - God I Love 78"? It's a Numero Group release I came across recently and I haven't heard really anything like it, let alone any Christian music. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it.

I haven’t heard this yet, but I *love* Numero Group. Thanks for the heads up about this! I’ll definitely be checking it out.

[jedwardkeyes]

The Choir, “Circle Slide” [Myrrh/Epic Records // 1990]

Circle Slide, the fifth and best record from the Orange County group The Choir, states its thesis in its opening lyric: “Imagine one perfect circle.” The line doesn’t seem especially profound until you start to unpack it. I’m relying on a memory of decades-old interviews here, but the lyric was reportedly inspired by something Steve Hindalong’s young daughter said to him when he took her to the playground one afternoon. After flying down the slide multiple times, she lamented that the ride was over too quickly, and that she wished there was a slide that just went around and around — a continual loop that she could ride forever. Hindalong took the idea and gracefully transformed it into a metaphor for heaven, a place where “lovers hide away, and children cheer.” His use of language is striking: in the song, images appear almost as mirages, gauzy and distant. The album’s opening moments are given over to fantasy: deep swirls of guitar, slow, druggy percussion, and lyricon winding slowly in the background like a searchlight across clouds. It’s like settling into a deep dream, where everything occurs in soft focus and the encouragement in the chorus — “Come on let’s ride the circle slide” — seems to take place in slow motion. It’s haunting and beautiful, like slipping into a warm bath, eyes closed, heart settled.

And then in the second verse, the carnival shuts down, and the fantasy collapses.

The Choir had dabbled in psychedelia before, but never had they submerged themselves as deeply as they do on Circle Slide. Growing up in the Bay Area, guitarist and vocalist Derri Daugherty would order psych albums from the Aquarius Records catalog, and at fleeting moments throughout their career they would come close to marrying the trademark mysticism of their lyrics with music that matched its mood. They succeeded in fits and starts on 1988’s Chase the Kangaroo, but then shifted hard in the opposite direction for 1989’s masterful Paisley Underground outing Wide-Eyed Wonder, a record whose roaring, R.E.M.-ish lead single “Someone to Hold On To” seemed designed to get their records out of Christian bookstores and into regular record racks once and for all. The Choir are part of what could loosely be considered alternative Christian music’s Big Four, the other three being Daniel Amos, The 77’s and Adam Again (vocalist Derri Daugherty would join the lead vocalists of those bands in supergroup The Lost Dogs in 1992). They mostly grew out of the same Southern California punk church ecosystem, and shared a commitment to using faith as a prism through which to write, rather than as a script treatment to be followed. (Hindalong and Daugherty were roadies for Daniel Amos, and were sitting in a tree watching when the group played a showcase for Curb Records executives.)

What made The Choir so alluring is the fact that they mostly focused on Christianity’s mystical aspects: their songs are full of spirits and ghosts, and drummer and primary lyricist Hindalong had a way of making even common issues like love and grief feel like they were taking place inside The Neverending Story. He’s often rightly praised as a lyricist, but what gets lost in those assessments is his light touch. He turns the absence of evil in heaven into a perfect storybook illustration: “The ground has melted where the devil stood.” On Circle Slide, the Choir abandoned conventional parameters, writing songs that stretched north of the 5-minute mark and opting for enveloping atmosphere over sharp, concise singles. The closest analogue would be Talk Talk’s shimmering Spirit of Eden — its opening track bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the first track on Circle Slide (Choir fans: Seriously. Listen to it.) — except that on Circle Slide, the Choir repeatedly, mercilessly, plummet back to earth.

After opening on the intangibility of heaven, Hindalong turns his attention to the physical: “Around my neck, against my heart/ I wear a wooden cross/ and sometimes I remember/ what freedom cost.../consider now the crimson crown the Man of Sorrows wore.” Over the course of the title track’s seven-and-a-half minutes, the band writes the template for the album in miniature: how nothing good, not heaven, not salvation, not eternal relief, comes without blood, pain or sacrifice.

After that opening benediction, the band returns their attentions to the physical. If Circle Slide initially seems like a meditation on the afterlife, the deeper into it you get, the more you realize its real subject is love, and Hindalong is both tender and unflinching in his depiction of it. Just as heaven cannot be attained without a measure of physical pain  — in Christian theology, the death of Christ on the cross; in everyday life, actual physical death — love itself is a briar patch, and if there are flowers at the center of it, you can’t get to them without shedding a little blood. Nowhere is this more apparent than the suite of songs that comprise Circle Slide’s turbulent middle section. On the mournful “A Sentimental Song,” over guitars that ripple like the aurora borealis, Daugherty gives voice to Hindalong’s tender, almost arrestingly sincere offer of comfort to his wife, singing, “Hide with me tonight, love endures the weather/ in the morning, we will dance together/ let my song fall down around you.” The song perfectly illustrates the group’s strange chemistry: Hindalong, the drummer, wrote all the lyrics but Daugherty, the frontman, sings them; this would be less remarkable if Daugherty’s delivery weren’t so gentle and so deeply empathetic. His fragile, sugar-cane tenor is the perfect vehicle for Hindalong’s relentlessly unguarded verse.

This all comes into sharp relief in “About Love,” The Choir’s best, most honest and most brutal song, in which Hindalong manages to explore every terrifying crevice and invigorating peak of romance with the kind of plainspokenness you’d only dare if you were sure your audience was limited. Over a tumbling, delirious guitar line, Daugherty imbues Hindalong’s verse both aching romance and genuine malice. The song opens with Hindalong leaving his wife, presumably for tour, and Daugherty sounds appropriately distraught. But Hindalong mixes the imagery in a way that’s deliberately troubling: “So good to hurt so bad/ so sad to ride away renewed/ go on laugh, go on cry/ it’s alright.” As the song progresses, the conflicting emotions get sharper, more focused, until Hindalong calls home from the road with a bruising request that conflates the joy and resentment of parenthood in a way that makes The Babadook look restrained: “Please kiss the little bird/ God bless the cozy cage we share/ you kill me, you thrill me/ you threaten my dreams.” The song’s final line is ruthless in its emotional devastation: “There’s something wonderful about love/ there’s something liberating death alone brings/ there’s something funny about a lot of sad things/ There’s something wonderful about love.” Hindalong would be the first to admit the sentiment isn’t admirable, but there’s a stunning fearlessness in the way he attacks it.

Musically, the record is a hazy, enveloping marvel; guitars appear in weird, wavy sheets; Dan Michaels’ lyricon — always the group’s oddest ingredient — floats sorrowfully along in the background, a kind of audible manifestation of the Holy Spirit, grieving the pain that unfolds over the course of the album but powerless to stop it. The album ends with the thumping Stone-Roses-at-half-speed “Restore My Soul,” where Hindalong-via-Daugherty cries out for salvation as Mike Sauerbrey’s bass, sounding like a lost Tribe Called Quest loop, stalks from the shadows. “I cry to you with two eardrums blistered/ from laughing with preachers of night/ with my vertebrae twisted/ from dancing with creatures of night.” As it progresses, the song becomes more suffocating: guitars settle in like black smoke from a burning building, percussion rattles and becomes frantic and Daugherty’s mantra, “Restore my soul,” becomes more dead-eyed, more desolate. Throughout the song, Hindalong tactically destroys his body: his lungs explode, his tongue is gone, his spirit chokes. This is what it takes to reach paradise — both temporal and eternal — the systematic destruction of the self.

And this is Circle Slide’s great, canny feint: it comes on like a record about the joy of the afterlife, but in reality is a record about the here and now, about how pain is often a requirement of love, and about how we often hold conflicting impulses and emotions inside of us, and are forever trying to navigate the perilous road between them. It makes heaven the ultimate metaphor — for love, mostly, but also for life in general. It’s the idea that sacrifice is not only necessary, but that it is, and should be, painful. It takes the idea of a linear slide and upends it. It’s not a quick, brief ride that starts in anticipation and ends in elation — it’s all of those things on repeat, over and over, a neverending cycle of joy, fear, relief, anxiety, love, pain, grief and victory, as long as we all shall live and, possibly, even beyond that. The old adage says that good things come to those who wait. On Circle Slide, the good things come to those who bleed.

[Support the vinyl reissue of Circle Slide on Kickstarter]

[jedwardkeyes]

One Bad Pig, “Swine Flew” // [Myrrh, 1990]

One Bad Pig were a hair metal band dressed in punk clothing, an unlikely Christian rock phenomenon who landed on one of the genre’s biggest labels, Myrrh Records, alongside Amy Grant and BJ Thomas, and went on to become one of the its most popular hard rock bands. Their live shows were cartoonish and chaotic: lead singer Carey “Kosher” Womack would belly-flop into inflatable kiddie pools filled with ice cream. He cut down Christmas trees with a chainsaw mid-show. The group bought an arsenal of guitars for the sole purpose of having audience members take to the stage and smash them. They’re the kind of band people cynical about Christian music -- or, honestly, music in general -- might assume were a record label invention, assembled to tap into an unreached market segment by appropriating all of the signifiers but none of the sound.

Except that the group’s ascent was relatively organic: their first full-length, Smash (after an EP titled A Christian Banned), was released by the Christian indie label Pure Metal and it was well-intentioned if a little primitive. They generated enough buzz with their anarchic live show, their healthy sense of self-deprecation and their raucous-but-not-dangerous aesthetic to land themselves a major label deal and studio time with producer Billy Smiley, a member of the enormously popular Christian arena rock band White Heart. According to an oft-repeated story, the group got their name when Womack and guitarist Paul Q-Pek stopped into a Pizza Hut while on tour and spied a stuffed pig wearing sunglasses that was part of a promotional campaign, causing Womack to quip, “That’s one bad pig,” to which Q-Pek replied, “That would be a great name for a punk band. We should form one.”

Which more or less summarizes Swine Flew, a record that sounds as if it was made by a band who had a general idea of what punk rock was, but may or may not have actually heard any (They did cover the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” on live album Blow the House Down, so all bets are off. I’m speculating again here. I don’t like doing it, but will try to always acknowledge when I do). Womack sings in a kind of tuneful growl, the tempos are faster than what mainstream Christian rock was accustomed to, and they threw in a few key punk phrases for good measure: an early anti-materialism hit was called “Smash the Guitar,” and Swine Flew contained songs called “Hey Punk!” and “Thrash Against Sin.” In an even weirder turn, the group managed to score a duet with a pre-Rick Rubin Johnny Cash on a cover of “Man in Black” on their final studio album I Scream Sunday (the title of which also hints at the band’s loosey-goosey interpretation of what constitutes a punk record -- namely, screaming. Also, it must be said, that’s a pretty incredible pun).  

What’s fascinating about Swine Flew -- besides the fact that it somehow managed to be hugely successful in mainstream Christianity despite its subculture posturing and the fact that the vocals mostly consist of a guy screaming -- is the way it dutifully nails every element of the crossover formula. It had a big-name producer, it was sonically pristine, and it came equipped with two covers of popular songs, Larry Norman’s “Christmas Time” and -- more successfully -- Petra’s “Judas Kiss.” The latter featured guitar work by Petra’s own Bob Hartman, which served to both bolster the group’s credibility amongst skeptical parents while also subtly underscoring their rock ‘n’ roll legitimacy. It’s a can’t-lose music industry bullseye: a co-sign from a legend.

Swine Flew opens with a galloping cowpunk rave-up called “See Me Sweat” that hints at the group’s Austin, Texas roots. Over the kind of poker-joint, razorbacked riffing that would do the Reverend Horton Heat proud, Womack -- larynx already shot to shit -- extols the virtues of getting worked up about the Gospel, starting out with a quick sketch of him emptying himself on a concert stage and ending with a picture of Christ sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Poured out from above/ His blood paid the debt/ you can see His love/ when you see me sweat.” Blood is a key ingredient in One Bad Pig’s music; punk rock trades in violent imagery, and there are few things as violent as a crucifixion. Despite the fact that their entire demeanor was cartoonish (their mascot is literally an animated pig), they never trivialize the essential story of the Gospel. Instead, they focus on its more violent aspects, which is both appropriate to the music they’re making, and also weirdly affecting.

Nowhere is this more true than in what is arguably the best song One Bad Pig ever recorded, and probably the sole entry in their catalog that I recommend unreservedly: the grim, deathrock, Billy-Idol-does-Danzig number “Red River.” A genuinely eerie song, it pauses the record’s hectic riffing in favor of slashing downstrokes of guitar, and gives Womack the chance to actually sing. His vacillations between baleful croon and agonized howl give the song a weird energy. The red river in the song’s title is the blood of Christ, flowing from the cross after the crucifixion, and the song’s lyrics are startling in their Dario Argento detail: “Dripping from that tree/ flowing down Skull Mountain/ into a bloody sea/ cover you, red river, cover me...cover me in crimson.” I would put this song on mixtapes today, if I still made them.

The rest of Swine Flew is hardly great, but it is worth listening to if only to marvel over the fact that it exists. They turn Petra’s “Judas Kiss” into a crazy Cuisinart of sound, guitars corkscrewing like tornadoes and Womack burning through the lyrics like he’s just trying to keep up. “Altar Ego” -- a close second behind “Red River” in the group’s list of redeeming moments -- is another southern-fried hard rock number with a shout-along chorus and lyrics that dress-down a prosperity-gospel pastor. “Hey Punk” is a 400-miles-per-hour motorcycle out of control, Womack evangelizing a skateboarding anarchist at the top of his lungs while the band barrels forward behind him. “Desperation,” a song I’d wholly forgotten about, stops halfway through for a rap by White Heart’s bass player Tommy Sims, making for one of the album’s weirder moments.

The group grew out of a street ministry -- Womack was studying to be a pastor, a profession he holds today -- and their music, however tongue-in-cheek, mostly reflects a binary view of the world. Unlike Daniel Amos or Adam Again, who focused on Christianity’s message of love and grace and acceptance, One Bad Pig were all about the clickthroughs. Conversion was their endgame, and the God in their songs, when not bleeding, was aloof and generally disgusted with humanity. The album’s title is a pun on the idea that One Bad Pig would one day be taken up in the Rapture. In “Thrash Against Sin,” Womack howls, “I think that I am perfect/ to Him it’s dirty rags/ when I think I’m getting warm, He takes one look and gags.” (Hearing that line for the first time since I was 15 suddenly makes my self-esteem issues make a lot more sense.) The God in “Bowl of Wrath” is almost smug, dishing out anger like Froot Loops (the song’s chorus, aimed at anyone who would mock Christianity, is “Bowl of wrath!/ Breakfast on a crooked path/ if you choose to laugh, you can have a bowl of wrath.”) It doesn’t make for pleasant listening but, to be fair, its hard-line dogmatism is in keeping with the general spirit of punk rock. It’s just that the thing One Bad Pig was being dogmatic about was eternal damnation.

It’s worth mentioning here that this album is 25 years old and, just like I wouldn’t want to be held accountable for things I said 25 years ago, I don’t want to do the same to One Bad Pig. They seem like decent guys who didn’t take themselves too seriously, and whose intentions were sincere even if their execution was a little, er, ham-handed. I don’t know where they stand on these issues today, and far be it from me to speculate. And for what it was, Swine Flew hits all its marks admirably. What’s more interesting to me is how this album became a runaway success in a market that was generally not known for playing to the fringes. One Bad Pig -- probably accidentally -- discovered a solution: bring the fringes to the middle.

To wit: the album ends with one of the most brain-bending songs Christian music ever produced, the riotous “We Want You,” in which One Bad Pig use the chorus to link arms with Amy Grant and BeBe & CeCe Winans and declare a message of unity. A snarling assault on “secular” rock music, the song is both an indication of the group’s either/or view of the world -- rock music is bad, Christian rock music is good -- and a strangely charming call to break down genre barriers within CCM. “Sing, Amy! Sing, Amy!/ Sing BeBe! Sing CeCe!/ We’re doing the same thing! We’re doing the same thing!” goes the football-stadium chorus. And while it mostly plays today as a sincere attempt to reach across the aisle, it’s also the one moment on Swine Flew that feels nakedly designed to placate Christian parents troubled by the group’s sound and attitude. In those three lines, One Bad Pig is cannily conveying the same message to both the grown-ups driving the station wagon to church and the kids sitting in the back: “Don’t worry, guys. We’re cool.”

[jedwardkeyes]

Why are you an atheist? Maybe you could post the story of your fall from salvation in Christ.

Appreciate you asking, but I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable doing that. If it comes up naturally in the course of discussing one of the records I’ll get into it, but otherwise I think I’d rather keep that personal.

[jedwardkeyes]

Daniel Amos, “Doppelganger” // [Alarma!, 1983]

When the Southern California group Daniel Amos are spoken about amongst fans of Christian Music, it’s often done so reverentially. There’s a reason for this. It’s not just the music that they made – a sprawling discography that hopscotches from alt-country to herky-jerk new wave to Elephant 6 psychedelia and back again  -- it’s the way that they did it. Like many of the groups this site has covered – The 77’s, the Altar Boys, Undercover – Daniel Amos began within the sheltering arms of the hippie-populated Calvary Chapel movement. But unlike those bands, Daniel Amos’s early records were designed with adults in mind. Immaculately assembled California country albums, Daniel Amos and Shotgun Angel landed somewhere between the Eagles and Sky Blue Sky-era Wilco, easy-listening for the newly converted with punchlines and pedal steel galore (those records tend to get a bad rap amongst Daniel Amos fans – for a brief period in the ‘90s, the band all but disowned them -- but taken for what they are, they’re both respectable AM radio efforts). The band was an immediate hit, packing out the Sunday evening Calvary Chapel service, the hippie-Christian equivalent of headlining Woodstock. At the peak of their powers, young Daniel Amos were playing for several thousand longhaired believers every week underneath the church’s outdoor tent. They performed a showcase for Curb Records executives who’d caught wind of the band’s buzz, and if they weren’t quite poised to edge their way out of Christian music entirely, they at least stood to be one of its most successful bands.

And then they gave it all up. A series of record label entanglements transpired in the late ‘70s (most notably, with Larry Norman’s Solid Rock Records) that I’m going to skip over here but, as always, refer you to John J. Thompson’s Raised by Wolves for the full story. For most record buyers, 1977’s smooth-and-breezy Shotgun Angel was followed by 1981’s Alarma! a nervous collection of weirdo new wave on which frontman Terry Scott Taylor swapped his California croon for a panicked yelp and the guitars pricked and wobbled. The net effect on their audience would be like if your father went to the record store to buy Hotel California, but the plant accidentally pressed David Bowie’s Lodger into the vinyl instead. And this was no mistake – Daniel Amos pulled a deliberate musical about-face, taking a long, hard look at their bank balances and their upward trajectory and the tentful of enthusiastic fans and deciding, “Nah, we’d rather do this instead.”

This all went over more or less as you might expect.  Had Alarma! been released in the general market, it would have slotted nicely alongside XTC or Devo, but Christian music buyers had no frame of reference for the music whatsoever, let alone the fact that it was coming from a band who’d previously given them songs with titles like “Posse in the Sky” and “Jesus is Jehovah to Me.” Alarma! was the first of a four-album series the band had dubbed The Alarma! Chronicles and on Doppelganger, the second installment, instead of retreating when they realized they’d alienated the majority of their fanbase, Daniel Amos instead shrugged and burrowed further in.

(Let’s pause for a second here to actually absorb the notion of a complete, four-album series, announced, scoped out and fully delivered on by the band over the course of five years. Plenty of artists make concept records, but Daniel Amos made four concept records, all centered around the same concept, all connected to one another, all of them succeeding to varying degrees. I often burn idle hours fantasizing about a luxe Alarma! Chronicles Numero Group box set that will never materialize. George Michael couldn’t even deliver Listen Without Prejudice Vol. II, something I hold against him to this day.)

If the band was tentatively exploring new wave on the first installment, Doppelganger is where they flipped off the lights and vanished into the darkness. The title of the series – Alarma -- indicated its purpose: a wake-up call to a comfortable church. But rather than go after “godless” left-wing strawmen on the record, Daniel Amos instead set their sights on religious hypocrisy. Terry Taylor often decorated his lyrics with bits of William Blake, Fyodor Dostevsky and Frederick Buechner, and on Doppelganger, he takes Kafka’s notion of the double and runs with it, using it as a metaphor for human inconsistency. On the freaked-out heart attack “Mall All Over the World,” with its swooping, Wagnerian synths and spastic bassline, he goes in on global consumerism, but slyly conflates corporate branding with religious iconography: “How come you’re sad, how come you cry, when golden arches cross your sky?/ They remind us of sweet by-and-by.” In Taylor’s world, the relationship between Christianity and consumer culture is nastily tangled. “Mall” doesn’t offer solutions, just cleverly-constructed rebukes. Later, in a song that remains depressingly relevant, he takes on the prosperity gospel. As an unhinged saxophone blasts away in the background, Taylor seems to predict the coming of Creflo Dollar and Joel Osteen, maniacally wailing, “I’m one of the King’s Kids!/ I do deserve the best!/ Make it a convertible! A bright red convertible!” The song sounds like it was written in the center of a twister: manic, looping guitars, worked-up Pentecostal ad libs from Taylor, and girl-group backing vocals that sound like the ‘street urchins’ from Little Shop of Horrors with murderous intent.

The rest of the record runs along a similar train of thought, but it gets more harrowing the deeper in you get. The production throughout Doppelganger is eerie and bleak: the band often sounds like they’re playing in the center of a blank black room, the open air behind their instruments hinting at unsettling nothingness. The slashing “Youth With a Machine,” its title a sly twist on the ministry organization Youth With a Mission, puts Taylor’s barking voice at the center of descending swipes of guitar, and his writing leaves the song’s meaning oblique. An avowed fan of the Beach Boys – an influence that would become more pronounced on the group’s later records – he often writes strangely lush, beautiful vocal harmonies into songs that otherwise are empty and jagged. Witness “The Double”: guitars draw bonkers hypotenuses around Taylor’s hiccupping vocal, but then the whole thing left-turns into a weirdly beautiful chorus. He does the same thing in the acid-humor “Angels Tuck You In”; calliope keyboards pop and burble, the chorus is disconcertingly beatific, and Taylor uses the verses to indict religious smugness: “No sense of menace, no feeling of dread/ you never worry your pretty little head/ and angels tuck you in tonight.” A few verses later, his writing is even more pointed: “This cartoon world you’ve created, it’s like Disneyland/ get out your golden ticket, the one they give you when you’re born again.”

If there is a drawback to Doppelganger, it’s that its barbs are so specifically aimed at Christian hypocrisy that they have no resonance outside that subculture – many of Taylor’s observations rely on an accrued knowledge of commodified Christianity, which makes Doppelganger a hard sell for anyone who doesn’t already have a very specific axe to grind with religious duplicity. But even if you blank out the lyrics, the music still stands a series of confounding puzzle boxes. The songs are built in strange, unlikely shapes – the way “Little Crosses” stops its frantic forward rush so a weird zombie Greek chorus can provide color commentary; the robotic waltz of “Distance and Direction,” with its metronomic synths. Every time I listen to Doppelganger, I notice something I hadn’t before.

In later installments of The Alarma Chronicles, Taylor would end each record with a benediction – a balm to soothe the acid that had preceded it, and a custom that produced some of his most beautiful songs (“The Beautiful One” from Fearful Symmetry is an “Across the Universe” rewrite that is almost as sweet and comforting as the original). There’s no such relief on Doppelganger. Instead, it ends with the Lynchian “Hollow Man,” where Taylor recites poetry about duplicity while a song from the group’s previous record is played backward behind him. “Who has failed,” he asks, “Mankind? Or the church?” The question is never answered. But the album that preceded it makes the response plain.

[jedwardkeyes]

The 77′s, “Sticks and Stones” // [Broken, 1990]

The story of the 77s has been told and re-told so many times within the walls of Christian rock that anyone even vaguely familiar with them could probably skip this first graf. A brief thumbnail: like many of the groups covered here, the 77’s more or less formed in church. In their earliest iteration, as the Scratch Band, they were the house musicians at Warehouse Christian Ministries in Sacramento, an offshoot of Calvary Chapel. Like many youth-focused churches at the time, Warehouse also ran a record label called Exit but, unlike many youth-focused churches at the time, Exit was formed with the specific goal of getting their artists out of the Christian market. This eventually led to a distribution deal with Island Records, for whom the 77’s released their third, self-titled album, an album that should have been their breakthrough. The 77’s received a glowing, 3½-star review in Rolling Stone, and the band was generating considerably local buzz on the back of their manic and exhilarating live show but, according to an oft-repeated story, Island was too occupied with the promotion of U2’s The Joshua Tree, which had come out a few weeks earlier, to give the band the attention they deserved.

That last part of the story never sat entirely well with me, mostly because it’s too simple and too rote and sounds too much like the kind of story fans of Christian music invent to explain why the bands they love never got bigger. While big labels swallow and spit out small bands all the time, I’m nagged by something frontman Mike Roe told me when I asked him about it years ago, which was a lot more even-handed. Though label negligence was a factor, Roe also allowed that the band also fell down on the job a bit. Though they were still relatively young, most of the band’s members were married, some with children (not uncommon when you’re raised in the church), and they were hesitant to jump into the kind of touring cycle a major-label release requires. I’d speculate that there was some fear involved as well -- it’s one thing to become quickly beloved playing a series of church-affiliated venues close to where you live that were constantly packed with sheltered kids starving for music that came anywhere close to good. It’s another to leave behind the safety of the familiar to hit the road for weeks on end for a much smaller audiences and, most likely, much smaller amounts of money. Whatever the case, the band imploded on the heels of what should have been their big break (there are a lot of other details and factors here that I’m kind of racing through; a more complete version can be found in John J. Thompson’s Raised by Wolves). The irony here is that the death of the band’s first incarnation would ultimately yield their greatest record. Sticks and Stones (later reissued in an expanded version, the bonus material winkingly titled Seeds and Stems) was a collection of 14 songs that (mostly) never found their way to an album, and all of them are unfailingly melodic and carefully burnished and the perfect showcase for a band that operated at about a hundred different musical intersections.

What makes the record succeed is the band’s push-pull internal dynamics. Singer and guitarist Mike Roe, at the time, was arguably one of the greatest rock frontmen working, a twitching live wire of charisma and gusto and swagger. Where so much of the bad end of Christian rock feels like it was parbaked in a germ-free environment, Roe had absorbed decades worth of actual rock history -- mostly from the ‘50s and ‘60s -- and understood instinctively that fronting a rock band was not the same thing as leading eyes-closed acoustic worship at the weekly teen service. The cover of Sticks & Stones was a loving recreation of the cover of an early Little Richard album, and several of the songs it contained had the visible fingerprints of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and, of course, Elvis Presley. Almost as important, Roe looked like a rock frontman -- a wild shock of Robert Smith hair perched atop his pale, bony face, Roe at the time was enigmatic without even trying to be. There was something renegade about his whole demeanor, the sense that he was some sort of Jim Jarmusch Rock Singer Character, a ghost without a past who appeared out of nowhere and could just as easily return to the same. He also possessed one of rock’s crucial elements -- a streak of defiance. Where most mainstream Christian bands aggressively marketed themselves to parents as a safe musical choice for their children, Roe never seemed interested in being anyone’s substitute for The Cramps. That attitude would eventually get him into unending amounts of Christian music trouble, entangling him in the kind of squabbles fans of mainstream music would find laughable: he tried to title an album Pray Naked, and his record company freaked out and refused. He included the lyric “This whole world has kicked my ass” on a record, the label forced him to have the tape garble when he sang it. Three songs were forcibly dropped from his first solo record because they contained the mere implication of profanity. To put it simply, Roe seemed legit: an actual rock star in a subculture full of stand-ins.

If he had a weakness -- and all heroes do -- it was his affection for a very particular strain of the blues, but on Sticks and Stones, those dalliances are reined in by the other members of the band. Sticks and Stones is the perfect balance of warring musical extremes, soaring, guitar-driven pop songs that play like a Rough Guide to the first 30 years of rock & roll. Though the 77’s and Roe have become almost synonymous, it’s keyboard player Mark Tootle who’s responsible for some of Sticks and Stones’ strongest songs. The starry-eyed love ballad “Nowhere Else” revolves around backing vocals that land somewhere between the Andrews Sisters and the Ronettes, Roe delivering its big-hearted lyrics with genuine warmth and feeling. The shadowy new wave number “This is the Way Love Is” -- one of the group’s most underrated songs -- benefits from Roe’s tic-laden, intuitive delivery. While a piano blinks like a broken traffic light in the foreground, Roe snakes himself through the blank spaces in the center. The song works as much for its obtuse lyrics as the way Roe delivers them -- he stretches some words out for several bars, delivers others at a rapid-fire clip; he ramps up to the song’s big finale slowly talk-singing the song’s pivotal line -- “I kept it all to myself like a miser holds on to...his last dime” -- to give it a sense of gradual acceleration. And he sings the crushing “Don’t, This Way,” a song that feels like it was written at the side of a hospital bed and delivered at the funeral a few days later, with almost bottomless tenderness, his voice cradling every word. There have been countless songs written about death, but few capture the cold sorrow of those left behind as effectively. Roe was celebrated in Christian circles for his guitar playing, but his greater gift was as a singer -- most rock frontmen fret and worry over the kind of nuanced, perfectly-controlled pitch and rhythm Roe seems to deliver on Sticks and Stones without blinking.

But if Tootle’s contributions are Sticks and Stones’ most elegant and beautiful, Roe’s are its deepest, most layered and most profound. You can hear the decades of popular music he’s memorized, absorbed and refracted in each measure. “Perfect Blues” is built around a ‘50s blues lick, but it’s recorded all wrong, in all the right ways -- the riff snarls like punk rock, Roe’s vocal is close-mic’d -- almost plasticine -- and weird glitches and tics appear throughout the song (most notably, a long answering machine beep at around 2:45) that expertly undercut any kind of dull rock classicism. “Pearls Before Swine” is a sneering deathrock workout loosely based on the story of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob in Genesis 25, but hinting at something deeper and more awful. And “Do It For Love” is a big, swell-chested anthem perfectly designed to scrape the ceiling of arenas the 77’s would, sadly, never inhabit. Its charging, all-hands-on-deck command to “lift up your heart to heaven/ dream this dream with me once more,” 30 years on, feels more sincere, human and believable than any line on The Joshua Tree, the album that aided and abetted the 77s’ obscurity.

Like all of the best bands in Christian music, faith enters the music of the 77’s glancingly -- it’s rarely the subject of the song so much as it’s the lens through which the subjects are viewed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the album’s standout track -- and arguably the crown jewel of the band’s discography -- “The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes and the Pride of Life.” The phrase is nicked from 1 John 2:16, which says, “For everything in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--comes not from the Father but from the world,” but rather than simply regurgitate a Bible verse, Roe uses it as a springboard for unflinching autobiography. The song’s lyrics are so masterfully constructed it’s difficult to resist the temptation to quote them here in full. (In fact, an entire verse was lifted wholesale by the unforgivable Nebraska band 311 for their single “I’ll Be Here Awhile,” a fact that was not lost on a salty, bemused Roe.) In each verse Roe, perhaps starting to feel success slip through his fingers, turns what Elvis Costello once called the “deep dark truthful mirror” on himself again and again, and nowhere does it sting more than in the verse where he addresses his own career, incorporating a bit of rock-scene jargon with audible disdain: “And I love when folks look right at me and what I’m doing or have done/ and lay it on about how groovy I am/ and that I’m looking grand.” But in the next verse, the knife twists: “And every single word makes me think I’ll live forever, never knowing/ that they probably won’t remember what they said tomorrow/ tomorrow I could be dead.” He breaks up these long lines over the song’s bars in a counterintuitive way, and the approach heightens the song’s inherent sense of sorrow. It is a beautiful, defeated, three-and-a-half-minute sigh, and though it boasts mandolin work by the Byrds’ Chris Hillman, his presence is almost superfluous: all the song needs is Roe’s voice and guitar and the effect is exactly the same.

After Sticks & Stones, Tootle and bassist Jan Eric left, and Roe eventually was joined by David Leonhardt and Mark Harmon (not that Mark Harmon) on 1992’s near-perfect power-pop album Pray Naked and several other records against which I harbor the kind of illogical grudge you reserve for your favorite bands when they make records you disapprove of. But of all the bands I’ll be writing about in this Tumblr who deserved a wider audience, when pressed to pick just one, I will always pick Mike Roe. Because Roe, more than anyone else, seems like he was born to it -- like his whole life was leading to that point. As it stands, Sticks & Stones is a kind of mini history of rock from 1955 to 1987 -- guided and constructed by someone who sounded like he had memorized every note.

[Support the vinyl reissue of Sticks & Stones on Kickstarter]

[jedwardkeyes]

This is great. I went through a very similar journey myself. I would love to see you discuss any of the old Christian hip hop as well like Brainwash projects, SFC ETC. Thanks so much for this blog!

Funny you should mention this -- I’ve actually been thinking about doing that very thing. I missed a lot of those records when they came out, but I’ve been meaning to check them out, and this would be a good way to do it. Thanks for reading!

[jedwardkeyes]

what do you think the chances are that any of this music will be "rediscovered" by a more accepting fan base? NPR music has covered luxury, native lights, mewithoutYou and it's cool to read new perspectives from middle-aged, reformed xian rock fans, but i wonder if we're shouting at each other in the same coded language we've used for 30 years? has starflyer had a limited edition 20-year re-issue of silver? has mike knott gotten a damien jurado-like renaissance record? nope. what's your take?

I don’t think you’re entirely wrong. I think I was sort of naive about this for a while. When I assisted (in a very, very small way) with the Daniel Amos Darn Floor -- Big Bite reissue a few years ago, I had this idea that maybe it would spark some kind of new interest in them, and maybe get them the attention they deserved. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

To be honest, I don’t know if it will ever change. There’s a lot stacked against it: First off, most of these records are 30+ years old. Secondly, they’re a splinter offshoot of a genre that’s already a splinter offshoot of popular music, making them so niche it’s hard to justify any kind of major coverage. As an editor, I can’t think of a spot where a column like my Tumblr would fit, and I also can’t imagine a site with enough reach to generate actual interest in this music where the pageviews for a column like mine would justify the effort and expense. Also, there’s so much music out there, and the odds of someone who’s not already familiar with the music tripping over a Christian rock column, and deciding to dive in are pretty slim, especially with everything else competing for their time.

I think also so much of it is lost without the surrounding context. A record like Daniel Amos’s Doppleganger is revolutionary inside Christian music because it was going after hypocrisy in the church, but I’m not sure how much it would resonate with someone who didn’t have that context. The same thing with Undercover’s Branded -- it’s a great record, and it’s such a repudiation of the albums that came before it, but if you’re just coming to it cold, I don’t know how much of an impact it would have. I think ways that could change would be if, say, Secretly Canadian decided to do a deluxe reissue of Rocket & a Bomb, or Sacred Bones reissued Shaded Pain. But short of something like that happening, I’m not sure there’s going to be widespread interest in or a rediscovery of these records.

That’s actually part of the reason I started this Tumblr in the first place -- these records mean a lot to me, and I knew I wanted to write about a lot of them, and I’m running out of time to do so. Also, these records are so tied up in a specific time in my life, and also involve an examination of faith and belief and the lack thereof, and doing this site allows me to work through a lot of that in public. But it’s (understandably) hard to get that kind of leeway for something so niche and personal, so this seemed like a good way to do it without any kind of strings attached -- it’s just something I want to do, and something I need to work through for myself, once and for all.

So to answer your question: I’m really not sure there ever will be a widespread interest in this music, and we may just be continuing the same conversation we’ve all been having for the last three decades. But I think, on a personal note, I felt like I never really had that conversation from start to finish, and kind of wanted to just say my piece on these records once and for all, on my own terms, without any “stakes” or expectations, and the traffic has been strong enough to keep me motivated and optimistic. It’s my little way of documenting something that was really important to me, and working through all of the issues attached to it in a relatively safe space.

That said: If anyone out there is reading this and wants to adopt this column for their large music website, I’m pretty sure we can work something out.

[jedwardkeyes]

Q&A: Riki Michele on Love, Loss & Hearing “River on Fire” For the First Time

For nearly 10 years Riki Michele was the co-vocalist for one of Alternative Christian Music’s most well-regarded groups, Adam Again. Her presence, both on stage and in the songs, served as a kind of counterpoint to frontman (and Michele’s husband at the time) Gene “Eugene” Andrusco. In concert, she filled a role that existed in no other Christian group: she was a dancer, at a time when dancing in Christian culture was essentially considered sex on stage (the Bible College I attended banned it outright).

Her presence on the group’s five records was just as crucial. Where Eugene’s voice often seemed to be shot through with an inescapable sadness Michele’s gently-drifting alto felt calmer, more clear-eyed and hopeful. All of that changed on their 1992 masterpiece Dig. A chronicle of Michele and Eugene’s divorce – told, at times, in unflinching detail – the album required Michele to sing lyrics penned by her husband about their breakup often, as on “River on Fire,” to devastating effect. The group officially dissolved with Eugene’s passing in 2000 (bassist Paul Valadez passed away in 2013), and in the intervening years, Michele has been continuing the solo career she began 1989. Her latest record, Push, produced by CCM veteran Margaret Becker, is her strongest to date. Recalling at times both Jane Siberry and early Sarah McLachlan, the record addresses the passing of Michele’s sister, and her own struggle to hold on to hope in the darkest of times.

So I wanted to start by asking you a question I’ve seen you ask other musicians when you interview them for your blog. What was the music that you were listening to when you were growing up? What made you want to be a singer?

Not much in the way of secular music. I got my dose of that in the car on the radio, but my dad’s a minister, and my parents had me start singing in church when I was three or four years old. It was a natural thing for me to get up on the pulpit with my dad and belt out a number, or play tambourine behind my mom who was the piano player for the church. I was born into a long family history of ministers – a very conservative, fundamental Pentecostal denomination. So I had a very particular point of view, musically speaking, growing up.

Fortunately, some good soul music seeped its way in at certain times – like Andrae Crouch, he was my favorite. And we’d have these Southern Gospel quartets come through, and I loved when they would come to the church, because they would bring a full band, and have four- or five-part harmony. When I hear that kind of music now, it really warms my heart, because I remember how much fun it was for me to hear all that as a kid. I think that probably had a lot to do with the shaping of my personal singing. So it started there for sure, but I didn’t start listening to “regular" music until probably Jr. High or High School. And then when I met Gene, that’s when my whole musical library just exploded.

How old were you when you met him?

I must have been around 15. I started dating him when I was around 16, and I immediately became a member of Adam Again at that point. And then we got married when I was 18 – I was still in high school. It was a big problem, because he was 5½ years older, and my parents did not like him at all. I would skip school constantly and go to his house. But he worked his way into my parents’ hearts through his piano – he’d play piano for the offertory in church. And two guys that I grew up with in the church were his friends and bandmates, so my parents knew of all the connections. So that was my in, and I finally got them to accept him. Because he certainly wasn’t very personable or outgoing! [laughs] He didn’t talk to them a lot at first. Once you crack the shell, he’s a lot easier to be around – he’s a really funny guy. And once they saw that I was being bullheaded about getting married at 18, they just had to go with it. [pauses] I don’t recommend that, by the way, getting married at 18. [laughs] Not a good idea!

So, wait, did Adam Again start when you were 17 years old? You were that young?

Yeah, yeah. Those guys were a little bit older than me – they were probably closer to Gene’s age than mine, but they were all in a band called Martus right before Adam Again, and Sim Wilson, another preacher’s kid – who was actually my first boyfriend – was the lead singer of that band. He started singing for Undercover, and I don’t know if that’s what split up Martus or if it was just time, but right after Martus split up, that’s when Adam Again formed. It was all the same guys, except Gene took over as lead singer. And they saw me singing in church, they all knew me, so I just slipped in through the back door of Adam Again and made myself at home and stayed for a while.

So, as I started working out a schedule of the albums I wanted to talk about in this Tumblr project, one of the things that I noticed was that it was kind of overpopulated with dudes. I wanted to ask you, as someone who was actively involved in that scene, is this just my perception, or was it something of a Boys’ Club?

Oh, yeah, it was. There were some female artists, but it was a total boy’s club. And that was sort of the mentality in our circle of friends, too – the guys were in charge. I was too young and naïve, and really not musically savvy enough, to bully my way into any other position than I was in. And because I was a preacher’s kid, I was always used to being out in front. I’d been singing all my life, and there were times where I missed being at the front of the band, or having more leads on songs or things like that.

And Gene had a very, very specific picture of the band that he wanted to carry on, and it did not include me as the lead. And he didn’t want to switch off, like a Fleetwood Mac thing. I remember having lots of conversations with him about it. And it wasn’t malicious – it was just that he saw the band a certain way, and that’s the way he wanted. And that’s why I broke off and did some of my own solo stuff, because I did have that longing and that need.

That’s just kind of the way it was. There were times where I was aware of it, and then there were times I wasn’t. Nowadays, I would not be in a situation like that at all. And as time went on, Adam Again was less fulfilling. As I got older and started becoming a woman, and coming into my own, and learning more about the direction of music that I wanted to go into, it was not as fulfilling for me. It was always great to be in the midst of that music, and he will always be one of my favorite writers, and I’m grateful that I had that opportunity. But it wasn’t without its difficulty and misunderstandings.

One of my weaknesses as a writer is that I have a tendency to impose my own narrative on the facts, so I wanted to ask you, since you were actually there: do you think the lack of female-fronted groups was connected in any way to the really rigid views on "gender roles" in that subculture at the time?

Oh, I think that it had a lot to do with that in our conservative circles. We were all – with the exception of Gene, actually – raised in church. Greg, the guitar player, his wife and I were friends from the time we were little kids, and they got married when she was like 17. They had to get a whole parental permission statement – and they’re still married. And then the sister of the bass player, Paul, she got married young, too. In my circle of friends, it was totally normal for us all to marry young. We weren’t really college-driven kids – we were in, “get married, have a family” sort of surroundings at that time. I couldn’t live that way now, for sure. Looking back on it, I have had many a therapy session over the obsessiveness of those situations. And I think as we grew older, we became more liberated from that, Gene included. But he had that outlook, too, when we were younger – the man was the leader of the household, he was the leader of the band. I definitely was not on that same level. But I don’t think those things were done with intention. I think they’re roles that you automatically are in because you grew up in that environment. And then you learn the ways of the world as you grow and become adults and you look at it and realize, “Oooo, wow, that’s not good.”

So, not only were you one of the few women in a band in an extremely conservative culture at that time, your primary role in the band, in addition to singing, was dancing. I remember back then, there was actual panic around the idea of dancing – they viewed it as if you were basically having sex. Did you ever get in any trouble for how you were on stage?

[laughs loudly] Yes! I got in trouble all the flipping time! You would think these people had never encountered a female form dancing before. And what was so funny about it – and I look back on it with a little bit of pride – is that I was not a big risk-taker in my life at that time. But for some reason, when it came to my dancing, I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me what to do. I’d been dancing since I could walk, as much as I’d been singing. Here’s the thing about my upbringing – my parents were raised in the church that they are still in. In their heart of hearts, I don’t think that is who they are. So it was kind of like, as long as anybody from the church didn’t see me, then it was OK. They took pride in the fact that I could dance like Michael Jackson when I was little – but I could only do it in the house. I couldn’t do it outside of there.

I begged my dad to go to the 8th grade graduation dance, and he told me as long as I promised not to dance, I could go. So, I promised, and the very first thing I did when I got there was enter the dance contest. And it was a full-on, Solid Gold, disco-dance-with-a-partner type thing where, at the end of the dance-off, all the people are standing around you in a big circle. I got runner-up to some pop-and-lockers, and I won a whole handful of albums. And my dad picked me up from the dance and asked, “Where did you get those?” and I said, “Oh… a contest.” And he said “What kind of a contest, like a drawing?” And I said “Uhhh…yeah?” Turns out, he came early to pick me up and he was there during the dance-off. And he was genuinely torn down the middle about it. I overheard him talking to a friend and saying, “Man, she can dance!” He couldn’t care less. His biggest concern was that some of the teachers at my school knew he was a preacher. And it was at that time in my life that I decided, “This is not me. This is no who I am, and this is not how I’m going to be, and I’m going to get out of all of this as soon as I possibly can.”

And when it came to the band, I couldn’t help myself. It is literally a part of who I am, and I was stubborn about it. For the most part, Adam Again fans were awesome. But I got letters from people saying that I had caused their husbands to stumble! [laughs] Crazy stuff. I got people coming up to me after concerts and “tsk-tsk”ing me, shaming me a little bit. And I wasn’t trying to “incite sex,” but I felt sexy! I felt dancey, and I felt a deep connection to all of those feelings, and to the music, and that’s where I felt comfortable in my role in Adam Again. So nobody’s gonna tell me not to dance!

You touched on something that it took me so long to work through in my own life – and I think I’m still working through it, if I’m being honest – the idea that, in those circles, you can do something with the best of intentions, but if someone interprets it the wrong way, it’s your fault – you caused them to sin. You have to be constantly worried about how people might possibly interpret every little thing you’re doing, to the point that it makes you absolutely paranoid. You can’t live like that, worried that something you’re doing might accidentally offend someone and you’ll end up getting yelled at because of it. All it does it make you paranoid and frozen.

Absolutely. And I’d already had a lifetime – not from my family, but from the surrounding culture – of a faith life based on shame and blame and guilt. Guilt and shame were what my whole faith life was driven by. And fear. And I was so sick of it at that point. And I was a big people-pleaser growing up, and so I was constantly struggling with that internally. I wasn’t going to stop dancing, but every time I got a slam, it affected me personally. And it wasn’t like I was just able to shrug it off and not care. I still feel like I’m deprogramming from that world, and learning not to feel the guilt from some of the things I’m doing – trying to release myself from that. I just kind of feel like sometimes I’m just hanging on to faith by a thread. I have more questions and doubts today than I ever have, and on any given day I could be like “I’m done.” But then the very next day I feel something deep within me telling me, “No, you’re not quite done.” I struggle with it all the time.

One of the things that struck me, when I went back to review Homeboys, is that you guys were not only a multi-gender band, you were a multi-racial band, too (drummer Jon Knox is African-American and bassist Paul Valadez is Hispanic). I specifically mention this because it really stood out against the super whitewashed background of Christian rock. And when you listen to Homeboys, you guys were singing about places that would be so foreign to the suburban Contemporary Christian subculture – you may as well have been singing about another country. How much of the choice to shift to that kind of subject matter was conscious on the band’s part?

I think a lot of it has to do with the way that Gene and Paul grew up. Paul and Gene were friends from the time they were real little. And I did grow up in a very straight, white upbringing. Gene was not a Christian his whole life. He grew up in Pomona, and there are pretty rough parts of Pomona. He went to a high school that was predominately black, a bunch of his friends on his block were Hispanic – he was more immersed in a diverse world growing up. And Paul was, too. They had lots of different types of friends, and that was just their life. I think that played out in the way that we wanted to live. When Gene and I got married, we moved back to Pomona. And it wasn’t so comfortable for me, but I felt a sense of pride in doing that. I didn’t share the same point of views that my grandparents shared. They would sometimes shock me with these little bits and pieces of indirect racism. I have a very, very loving family, but the older generations were still old school and had no experience being in a multi-cultural situation. But I felt differently, even as a kid.

So when I met Gene, he was just such a representation of the world outside to me. He wasn’t a church kid, and he wasn’t from the same background. So moving to Pomona and being immersed in people of all races and status – that really helped me see a different completely side of life. Gene and Paul would play baseball on the streets and hang out with the kids in the neighborhood – it was very Homeboys-esque, and I know that album was just a depiction of their upbringing. I don’t know if it was intentional to set us apart from the community that we were in, I think he was just writing about his life.

Obviously, the two other examples of autobiography in the catalog are Dig and Perfecta, both of which chronicle – in painful detail – the breakup of your marriage to Gene. Gene was the mouthpiece of the band, and you’ve said in previous interviews that he sometimes used songs as a way to talk to you. Did you ever feel frustrated that your perspective on the situation wasn’t coming through, and that he was kind of owning the narrative of what was happening to your marriage?

The answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes. I felt that way quite a lot. I was already hurt and frustrated in our personal life, because he would not convey those feelings to me directly. I wouldn’t find out about the songs literally until we were either going on stage, or going into the studio. When we were doing Dig and I heard “River on Fire” for the first time, I was like, “Oh my gosh, we are in trouble. We are in deep shit.” And what would frustrate me is that he still wouldn’t want to deal with it. He’d say, “Oh, it’s not about us.” But who else was it gonna be about? And then aren’t we bamboozling all the Adam Again fans if we’re just playing on their emotions and writing a song for drama’s sake, when you know they think it’s about us?

And it was about us – all those songs were about us. I was really frustrated. And that part of my life was so painful, and there were so many years of therapy and growing and forgiving myself for not handling it differently. I think that, as the years went on, he looked back and wanted to make that better for me. It wasn’t him trying to be malicious, and it wasn’t him trying to hurt me. It was him being an artist and writing what was in his heart. But he was so dysfunctional as a person when it came to dealing with feelings – we all were – that he could not face the reality of the pain. And he couldn’t fix it. So he made it into art.

But I went through different phases. When I was immersed in that culture, I just wanted to stay in it, because it was my community, and it was the only world that I knew. But it was hurtful. And when I got out of it, that was hurtful, too, because I was leaving that community. But in the long run, it was much better for my heart to step away from it. At that time, I don’t know if I was aware of the fact that I was upset that my side of the story wasn’t getting told. I was just so taken aback that the story was even out, and that I was going to have to sing it, with him, on stage in front of people. That is humiliating sometimes. And sad. There was some embarrassment on my part, because the songs were so raw. But they’re so beautiful, too. And so well written that – [pause]. You just can’t blame him, because they were such good songs. Now, if they were shitty songs, I would have been furious. [laughs]

When Perfecta came out, I’d already moved away. We’d already been split up for a couple of years at that point, and I’d moved to Nashville, and he brought the band to Nashville to do some recording there for Perfecta, and he played “Stone” for me in the car, just me and him. And it was the first “I regret losing you” song I’d ever heard him write. And, again, he played it for me, but prefaced it with “This is not about us.”

There’s even a line in the song: “This song’s not about me at all/ just trying to conjure up a fantasy.” I remember even hearing that line for the first time back when the album came out and thinking, “Well, that’s not true.”

And that’s the story of my life with him. He refused to talk about it. And I remember sitting in that car when he played that for me and honestly, when he said, “This isn’t about us,” I thought to myself, “Well, but I’m screwed either way, right? I’m screwed if it’s not about us, because it’s such a gentle, sweet lyric. And if it is about us, I’m screwed because that’s heartbreaking. And that was us in a nutshell. I think that was his way of trying to make it right, you know? And some days I look back on those times and resent it so much. And some days I can be an adult and feel the pain and the sweetness of it all. I think most days, that’s where I’m at.

Are there any Adam Again songs that still stick with you, even this many years later?

It wasn’t even until this past year that I was even able to listen to Adam Again. It’s so extremely painful in a lot of ways. It’s not just painful because it was personal, but it’s painful because of Gene's death. I don’t listen to any Adam Again, I don’t listen to any Lost Dogs [Eugene's side project with Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos, Derri Daugherty of the Choir and Mike Roe of the 77's -- ed.]. When he passed away, that was the first time that I listened to that much of his music. And I haven’t listened to it since then. I even find it hard to listen to The Choir, because it reminds me of that whole time.

I don’t know how long it takes to get over that, or if I ever will. And maybe it’s just because I don’t listen to it that I’ll never be able to get past it. But all that to say that people have been posting certain [songs and videos] on Facebook recently, and I see it, and think, “Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about that! That’s so awesome.” The one song that comes to my mind is “This Band is Our House.” I listened to that the other day, and I thought, “This is what I miss. So badly. I miss being on stage with those guys.” I love those guys with a passion. And I remember what that felt like, to sing that song and have all of those great parts swirling around me. I’ve started, in the last couple of years, singing “Dig” and “River on Fire” when I play live with an acoustic guitar player, and that was extremely healing for me. It got me over the hump – they’re beautiful songs, and people should hear them. It was difficult at first, but it got easier and easier every time I sang it. And I was able to just rest in the beauty of the song and not in the personal feelings of it all.

Your latest record, Push, is probably my favorite of all of your solo records. On your past records, you tended to work with people in your immediate circle – Gene, Dan Michaels, Steve Hindalong – but this one was produced by [mainstream CCM artist] Margaret Becker, who most people would not associate with the kind of music you’ve done in the past. How did that relationship develop?

It’s kind of representative of the fact that my life is completely different now. During that dark time, I moved from California to Nashville, and that was a complete game changer for the trajectory of my entire life. Dan Michaels once pointed out to me that when I was in Adam Again in my 20s, I sort of just let life happen around me. Gene was the leader and the guys were the players and I just kind of showed up and sang. And I was pursuing education & art all the time, but I was just letting life happen around me. I didn’t have the reins of my own self until I packed up everything I owned in a ‘75 Chevy van and drove it from California to Nashville.

And I was not a risk-taker. I look back on that time and think, “Man, I was ballsy! I can’t believe I did that!” It was kind of out of spite: Gene is the one who suggested it, because I was so miserable, and we’d broken up a few years before then, and he was just like “Shelly, why don’t you get out of here, and get away from this community that you’ve been so steeped in, and away from me, and get a new perspective, at least for a little bit?” We were on the phone, and when I hung up the phone I remember thinking, “I wouldn’t do that now, especially because you suggested it!” Because I’m stubborn that way – I hate for people to tell me what to do. And then in 60 seconds I was planning how I was gonna do it.

That’s when I met Dave, my true soulmate. We’ve been friends for a long time, and we were friends for six months before we even started dating. He knew my entire history, and he was a fan of the band, so I had no secrets. I felt fully known, and that also helped me know myself – to have a partner in crime who looked at me in the eyes and really knew me and loved me regardless. Dave and my kids have as much to do with my art as anything. Their love and support and influence in my life has helped me hone my skills as an artist. You learn so much about yourself being a mate and a parent. They definitely make me a better human every day.

So Dave is the one that knew Margaret. He and I had been married for a while, we started going to this amazing little community outreach church, and he’d known Margaret from working with her in the past. When we moved back to California, I started feeling the need to do another record. I had my kids, and it was hard to do anything for a long time. It wasn’t until 2007 or 2008 that I started feeling in charge again. I’d done various bands and played around town wherever I was living, but hadn’t put my whole heart into it. I was set to do Push with somebody else, and I just really wasn’t feeling like it was the direction I wanted to go. I went to Nashville to a friends birthday party and, to make it worth it, I had a couple of writing engagements. Margaret was one of them. And I met with her at her house and we wrote a song together, and I just fell in love with everything about her. She’s an amazing person, all the way around. And I had no idea that we were listening to the same kind of music – she was way more than her music painted her to be. Her broad spectrum of taste and her talent go way beyond the music that I’d heard her play in the past. I was so surprised and delighted to have this time with her.

At the end of our session, I was like, “I just want to do this again and again” and she said “Me too.” I said, “Do you produce,” and she said, “Why yes I do.” And the whole flight home I was like “Oh my gosh, she has to produce my record – she just has to.”

And let me tell you something about her: she’s the smartest person I’ve ever been in the studio with. She blows all my boys out of the water. They’re amazing people, amazing musicians, amazing songwriters, but she can do it all. She has every right to be Big Miss Fancy Pants and boss me around, but she never did once. It was the first time in my life where somebody said, “I want to hear what you have to say, the way you want to say it. I’m just here to sweep off the porch in front of you.” Whether they meant to or not, all the guys I’ve worked with in the past always felt like they were doing me a favor. And I don’t think that was intentional – I think that’s where I was in feeling a little insecure about my own professionalism and talent. But she tapped into it right away. She never stabbed me for not knowing my stuff or not being technically savvy. She’s magical! She’s like a magical talented unicorn in the studio.

And we’re just giddy together – we feed off of each other, and there’s a really delightful energy, and she makes me better. She changed my life in that way. When I tell her that, she goes, “You did the same for me.” And she might be blowing smoke, but I love her for saying it. It’s a mutual feeding of this lovely thing. She gave me homework. She would say, “OK, who are you? What’s going on with you right now?” And it was during the passing of my sister – I had themes of songs that I wanted to say, but they took on lives of their own when I started writing with her.

You write about love in such an interesting way on the record. Even in the first song – it’s both a “beautiful wire,” but then you also use violent imagery to describe it, like fire. What leads you to characterize it using such extremes?

I have no idea. I think the fact that I was experiencing both heartbreak and hope at that time in my life was tweaking the wording. Like, “Push” was all about an event or experience in your life that pushes you to the edge – and it can be tragedy, or something that just makes you feel like you can’t take anymore. But then you feel this determination, because it didn’t push you so far off the edge that you fell. That backing vocal coming in to say, “Here comes the stinger, here comes the push” – it’s that feeling of, “This is big, but I’m determined, and look at me, I didn’t fall.” That idea came to me even before I was feeling the heartbreak of my sisters passing. But then it became so true to me so the poetry just followed.

How long ago did your sister pass away?

Two years ago. We had been in San Diego for a few years, and we moved out here mainly because Dave was offered a job with Youth Specialties, and after having kids we found it harder to be away from the grandparents. And then Youth Specialties got sold, and they wiped out the entire staff, and that put us in absolute financial ruin. We’d just bought a house here, and that was only a year and a half later that that happened. So we sold the house and became renters again, after 16 years of being homeowners We were really unsure of our future. We knew we had community in Nashville, and the cost of living was cheaper, so we made the decision to move back to Nashville – much to the dismay of our family. We just felt defeated.

So we moved back to Nashville and did our best to make it work. It was not as comfortable as when we left. We weren’t in our old hood, we were smack-dab in conservative land, and that’s not who we are. But we were determined to make it work. My parents came to visit us at Christmas time, and my sister called us and said, “I’m so sick. I just feel like I have the flu. I don’t know what to do.” She ended up going to the hospital while my parents were visiting, and my dad just plummeted emotionally. He’s always been able to feel things – if I’m going through a hard time, you can put money on it that my dad’s gonna call me out of the blue. I was just wondering why he was taking it so hard that my sister was sick – looking back, I kind of feel like he just knew. Three weeks later, she was diagnosed with colon cancer that was just tearing up her liver. A month after that, I went out to visit her, and her family was still certain that she was going to survive it and have a whole ministry behind it –- a story to tell. Everyone just had so much hope. I went out to see her for a second time, and my brother flew out, and my parents were there, and we were all around her bedside when she passed away. It was only two months after she was diagnosed.

It as a life-changing event – to see her kids go through that, to see my parents go through that kind of pain. I just didn’t want to be far from them again. And that’s why we decided to move back to California after she passed away. We moved back to La Mesa and our whole community just greeted us with arms open. They loved our broken selves until we were mended again. That’s where “Into Peace” came from – that feeling of coming home and being completely loved when you’re broken.

Is that what “The Big One” is about?

I wasn’t necessarily talking about her death, because I started that lyric before she died. But like “Push,” it’s about that thing that happens to you that you have to come to grips with, and that brings you to a completely different place than you ever thought you’d be. But there’s still hope. I never lost hope. I don’t know if it’s faith or not. That whole situation really did rock my faith world, and I grapple with that constantly. But I never lost a sense of, “We’re gonna surface. We’re gonna get through it, and we’re gonna be strong because of it. But man, this sucks.”  

When I first heard “Hey Mama Hey,” I read it initially as a song about female friendship. But now I’m curious – did you write that song about your sister?

That one isn’t. But that song is so special to me, because when we first moved back to California I went to this all-girl’s artist weekend camp called Chick Camp. It was held in a winery – so we pitched our tents in the middle of grapevines – and we were given a theme when we first got there. We could write a song on that theme, or a piece of poetry, and then perform it on Saturday night. I was experiencing great female interaction and friendship, and I was in awe of the talent that was there. We just drank wine all weekend and sang and had special guests at night and did art – it was phenomenal. So I wrote that song and I was thinking about my mom and my sister, but I was also thinking about my incredible friends. I’ve got this incredible female force in my life, and I was feeling it in full that weekend. When it was my turn to perform, I went up to the mic, and there’s rows and rows of women staring at me, and I said “You all have to be my backup singers.” So I sang the lyric for them, and I said “Now, harmonize it.” And because they’re all artists, they sang it back in three-part harmony. It’s making me tear up just to tell you about it. We’re under the stars, and they were just singing this a cappella to me, and so I sang the verses over them and that was my performance piece.

I knew that I wanted it on the record, and I wished I could take all of them with me, but it just so happened one of my dear friends that I grew up with in California now lives in Nashville, and she’s an artist in her own right, so she came to the studio and sang on it. A new, dear friend, Jude Mason, who’s married to Steve Mason of Jars of Clay, she came in, and Thom & Holly Granger have been longtime friends and they were Kickstarter supporters, so I got Holly to sing on it. And it just so happened that one of my friends from New Zealand was coming through town the same day that we were recording, and she sang on it. So I had Chick Camp all over again – I had them sing the line over and over again, and they were harmonizing, and it was the same feeling. I was just so ecstatic that I had all these women that I loved so dearly leading the pack, and all of them were different examples of female strength, and motherhood – it was just so exciting.

That song, like a lot of other songs on the record, has elements of African music – specifically, mbube. How long have you been into that music?

I love world music of any kind, and in the last two or three years I’ve been heavily influenced and inspired by this project called One Giant Leap. It’s two guys from England, and they took themes like religion and money and God and sexuality and interviewed people all over the world – activists, actors, spiritual leaders – on these topics. Then they started recording and layering people from all over the world on the same song. So you’d have like 12 countries on one song, about one theme. Go down that rabbit hole on YouTube sometime. And then I found out that my great-grandmother was full-blood Cherokee. I’ve got this 8x10 of her. Uwoduhi means “Life is Beautiful” in Cherokee, and I tried to work those words into the song The Gift but it wasn’t working out, so we just made up a chant of our own and placed it in there. So I’m totally influenced by, love and want more of any sort of world music – African, Indian, all of it.

I wanted to ask about the song “What Would You Say.” The first time I heard it, it felt like a breakup song, but the more I listened to it, the less convinced I was that you were talking to a person.

You’re right, it’s not about a person, I’m having a conversation with my ego. I’ve been grappling, in the last 2 years I’ve totally stepped outside of the comfort zone of mainstream Christianity and, because of this One Giant Leap project, I’ve been reading other spiritual leaders, and I’ve been opening my mind to different kinds of things. At the very base, I’m still a Jesus follower. But I am convinced now in my life that there are certainly other paths to listen to. That got me to thinking about my ego, and how important it is, and could we live without it? Would we at complete peace if we could drop it? How would we survive without it? And what are the awful things it makes me do? 

How has your relationship to your faith changed over the years? I try not to feel guilty or judged anymore. I do still believe God is out there. I hardly ever say “God” anymore, because it helps me not fall into who I was. I’ve had to choose different language for myself so I can find my own path. And I’m still searching. I have so many more questions and eye-rolls about Scripture now than I ever have. Some days I’m like, “I don’t think I believe this anymore,” and it scares me to say it out loud, you know? At the same time, I’m so happy to be in this position. I’ve allowed myself, finally, to get here. And I’m happy for my kids – and scared at the same time, like “I hope mama’s bringing them up in the way they should go.” But I’m happy that they aren’t going to feel that guilt and judgment. And when they find spirituality for themselves, it’s gonna be from the purest point. So that’s where I am now. I’m grappling and following, and still trying to find a church that’s all-inclusive, where everyone is welcome – and I think there are a couple of places to go to for that. I’m still trying to teach my kids a life of love and compassion and not guilt and judgment. I guess if you can call it a faith walk, that’s where I’m at now. I never was a Scripture-memorizer. I think everything that I believe in – music, faith – I come by intuitively. I couldn’t argue my way out of a political paper bag. But I know my heart’s convictions, and I know who I am based on that. And I know what I want in life, and for my kids. And so I just keep in contact with that spirit inside of me, and hope that that’s OK, and that that’s enough. The fear still seeps in, like “Are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing? Are you praying like you should pray?” Those are the things that I struggle with from time to time. But I’m still hanging on. I’m not an atheist. But I would say that I’m still on a journey. I’m still in daily prayer, and I’m still stumbling over my own feet.

[jedwardkeyes]

Adam Again, “Homeboys” // [Broken, 1990]

There’s a pried-open chain-link fence on the cover of the third record by the Southern California group Adam Again, and it turns out to be the perfect entryway into the music contained inside. Set almost entirely in the inner-city neighborhood where Eugene grew up, far from the plasticine Dawn-scented suburbs commonly associated with Christian music, its first half functions as a kind of self-contained rock opera, documenting day-to-day life in a place where even having a day-to-day life was not a thing that could be taken for granted.

Like many of Christian Rock’s best records, Homeboys represented a sharp stylistic turn for the band. Their first two records, In a New World of Time, which featured cover art by reverend and southern eccentric Howard Finster, and Ten Songs By Adam Again, were exercises in a kind of gauzy, synth-heavy hybrid of funk and new wave. Though both are fascinating in their own way – particularly Ten Songs, which is a close-to-perfect record by a band that would excel at making close-to-perfect records – there are no jagged edges to be found on any of them. Their best songs are awash in color, synths streaking down like a watercolor left out in a sun shower.

So it’s jarring when Homeboys opens with a sharp swipe of guitar, as grainy and searing as a match striking sandpaper. Frontman Gene Eugene (his birth name is Andrusco, but it was shelved before Adam Again’s first record) quickly establishes setting: “In the summertime, in the streets where I grew up/ there were black guys, white boys and Mexicans.” That itemization is important: in the late ‘80s, Christian Rock was a lot of things, but the one thing it was more than anything else was white. The worst of it plays like what it is: music without a knowledge of music history made by privileged white people, for privileged white people, living in the kind of houses only privileged white people could afford. In that context, there’s a kind of defiance in Eugene’s opening lines – as if he’s saying, “This record does not take place in your world, so either be quiet and listen, or shut the door on your way out.” Where other Christian artists were burning entire songs warning their panicked listeners about the cartoonish demonic forces that supposedly controlled the planet (I know it sounds like I’m making that up – I’m not), Eugene was daring to offer actual flesh-and-blood reality. Here’s what happens in the next two lines: “And we loved to make a football game from lightpost to lightpost/ ‘Here comes another car, get out of the way again.’” Inevitably, the scene turns dark – Eugene introduces his best friend Jerry (“He taught me how to write on the wall/ and I taught him how to play chess”) and then loses him two lines later to a drive-by shooter. And then the song ends. There’s no literal or figurative deus ex machina, no Biblical promise that God is in control. Just a slow fade-out as Eugene and his friends contemplate death in the pale pink streetlights.

The whole first half of Homeboys more or less plays out like a musical adaptation of The Wire. The band goes straight from Jerry’s death into “The Fine Line,” a real-time play-by-play of a parking lot drug deal (I didn’t understand the double meaning of the word “line” in the song’s title until years after I first heard it). The first half of Homeboys crests in a spectacular double-shot, starting with the stark, shadowy “Bad News on the Radio,” which is a master class in narrative songwriting. Eugene writes from the perspective of a criminal hiding from the police (a key word in the song’s lyrics suggests he might be the same one who killed Jerry at the album’s outset). Every detail is perfectly arranged: “I took a walk at midnight, because all day long I had to lay low/ the keys are on the table, so if you want to leave just say so/ got to keep the lights out, got to keep me in the dark with my eyes closed/ …spotlight on the driveway, bad news on the radio.” What resonates about the song, even 25 years later, is how alive the characters feel. The world Eugene created wasn’t populated with stock heroes and villains and tied up with an object lesson at the end – these were real people who made bad choices they often regretted, but it didn’t make them any less human or any less afraid. The song fades out on a moment of crushing sadness: “Now I watch you sleeping, don’t wake up to say goodbye/ there’s no more/ as the sirens arrive, spotlight on the driveway/ bad news on the radio.” It’s followed by a note-perfect cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues.”

That song’s inclusion raises a crucial point about Adam Again: like many of the bands who operated in the same sphere, Adam Again were quickly tagged “alternative rock,” but to revisit Homeboys is to realize how inaccurate that designation was. Eugene was an avowed fan of soul and R&B and, more than anything else, Homeboys sounds like his pass at making a Bill Withers record. The way Eugene sings -- the inflections, the dips and leans – are the kind of tics only someone who grew up on the Stax catalog would absorb, and his ample use of the Fender Rhodes throughout Homeboys gives the songs a hazy elasticity. The band as a whole displays the kind of flexibility and intuitiveness that was lost on an audience who didn’t get the reference points. The mournful alto of vocalist Riki Michele – Eugene’s wife at the time – provides the perfect foil to Eugene’s hardscrabble approach, and drummer Jon Knox – name-checked in “This Band is Our House” – plays off Eugene’s guitar, providing blank spaces for him to slash his way through and hard points to pivot against.  If the second half of the record falters – and, to be fair, it does -- it’s only because the opening is so expertly drawn. But it’s worth it for the devastating closer “No Regrets,” the kind of song that makes Adam Again’s obscurity that much more agonizing, because there is no way D’Angelo will ever cover it. The song proceeds at a snail’s pace, Eugene grinding out guitar notes like he’s scraping burnt food from a frying pan. It opens on a note of helplessness: “I think about you often, but I don’t know what to do,” and proceeds to sketch Eugene’s life in small details: “I’ve got a woman who loves me/ I’ve got the pink slip for my car/ I’ve got a little place and the rent is cheap/ I’ve got a band who plays my songs.” But he’s bothered, still, by an old mistake, and as the song progresses, his anguish deepens, until he finally loses the fight: “If I could be anyone again, anywhere at all/ I would be that child in your arms.”

Homeboys would eventually be eclipsed in discussions of the group’s legacy by the record that followed it, 1992’s astonishing Dig, which is front-to-back flawless, and the kind of record that would easily place in Top 10 Records of the ‘90s lists if it wasn’t heartbreakingly relegated to the undeserving niche market of Christian rock (on a personal note, it is one of my favorite records of all time). Eugene would pass away in March, 2000, but not without leaving behind a body of work that resonates to this day. Homeboys provided a crucial transition. On Ten Songs, Adam Again sang about having their “eyes wide open.” On Homeboys, it sounded like they actually were.

[jedwardkeyes]

The Throes, “All the Flowers Growing in Your Mother’s Eyes” // [R.E.X., 1990]

The question of crossover has always been one of Christian music’s most nagging paradoxes. Fans generally broke out into two rival factions: those who wanted the bands they loved to find success outside the commercially and artistically strangling confines of Christian music, and those who equated that kind of success with spiritual sell-out -- “watering down” what they perceived to be a Divine message for the sake of a reasonable bank account (the fact that Christ spent the majority of his time hanging out with prostitutes and ruffians apparently didn’t factor into their logic much.)

But no band was better suited to Buzz Bin breakout stardom than the Virginia group The Throes, whose debut All the Flowers Growing in Your Mother’s Eyes distilled the sound of early ‘90s college rock into a few essential elements -- paisley-patterned chords, loop-de-loop basslines and tender, pleading vocals -- and rooted all of them in steady, surefooted melodies. There’s a natural ease to Flowers -- the sound of a band with a clear idea of who they wanted to be and simply being it; there’s no over-thinking in the song structures or over-baking in their execution. Instead, there’s a directness to Flowers -- simple truths, spoken simply.

The group’s three members seem to disappear into each other; frontman Bill Campbell’s mournful voice is the perfect contrast to bassist Joy Gewalt’s eerie, snaking alto; drummer Harold Evans, who would go on to form the spinART band Poole, fills the background of the songs with loose, tumbling percussion; the net effect is something like autumn leaves going orange and drifting slowly to the ground. The title track is a bright tangle of guitars, and Campbell sings it like he’s looking sadly out a window at the rain coming down outside; “All Alone” works a slowed-down B-52’s groove, Gewalt answering every one of Campbell’s pointed verses with cop-siren “ Oh Oh Ohs.” And the breathless “Tell” plows forward head-first, Campbell delivering its elliptical lyrics over a rollercoaster bassline before the whole thing opens up into a corkscrewing guitar solo that seems to nick its melody from ‘60s Iranian rock & roll. The group always netted comparisons to R.E.M., and they’re still easy to hear, but they’re also difficult to pinpoint -- if Flowers sounds like R.E.M., it’s some lost record between Green and Out of Time, when the group hadn’t yet fully unplugged their amps. Overall, Flowers is characterized by a distinct sense of possibility -- the music of a young band who still had the future ahead of them.

But what sets Flowers apart -- and what made the Throes a more likely candidate for crossover than even many of their peers -- was how convincingly it conveyed the notion of the physical. It deals with emotional themes, to be sure -- love, primarily, as well as lost innocence -- but all of them exist on Flowers in flesh-and-blood terms. Of all the Christian bands aggressively marketed at teenagers, The Throes were the only ones who felt like they’d actually been teenagers themselves. Even the Choir, probably the group’s closest peers in terms of sound and demographic (The Choir’s Steve Hindalong would produce later Throes records) tended to add an element of the mystic even to their love songs, which had the effect of veiling the emotion, like fog around a streetlamp. The love on Flowers instead is like a knife slicing bare skin -- real, tangible, painful. It is arguably one of the most realistic and convincing albums about adolescence ever made, because Campbell had a rare knack for capturing the terms in which deep-feeling freshmen actually think -- there are metaphors, sure, because that’s the way some of our brains work in our early 20s. But they feel lived-in; Flowers convincingly depicts the longings of heartsick adolescence in a way that feels convincing instead of contrived.

When matters of faith do turn up, they too feel three-dimensional. On “Skin Kings,” which nicks both the chords and frantic forward rush of Patti Smith’s “Gloria,” Campbell turns the battle between spirit and flesh into a kind of existential Russian Doll -- the soul is in the flesh, the flesh covers the soul; in the song, both feel tangible. And in the gorgeous closer “Passion Flower,” Christ becomes the title, with the ability to stain, to bloom and to die. The way Campbell sings it, it feels like more than just a literary device -- it has real weight and texture and dimension. And it feels like a backhanded compliment to say that Flowers is the rare record that feels like it was actually made by people, but that immediacy, that physicality -- that’s not an easy feat to accomplish.

Which is all the more frustrating that the Throes remained quarantined within Christian music. Flowers was released by the New York label R.E.X., which had ties to mainstream radio, but their area of expertise was in marketing metal bands. Songs like “Eyes of My Sisters” and “Nature and the Soul” would have slotted in comfortably on college radio alongside Rain Parade or early Bangles, and it’s a shame they never found their way there. As it stands, Flowers was there to provide solace for the church kid -- or, in my case, the Bible College student -- who was wrestling not so much with theology as he was with being stuck in the Escher-drawing labyrinth between adolescence and adulthood and needed a band who actually sounded like they were doing the same thing, in real-time.

[jedwardkeyes]

Leslie Phillips, “The Turning” // [Myrrh, 1987]

Before she was making spare, shadowy art folk as Sam Phillips and spending off hours soundtracking Stars Hollow for Gilmore Girls, Leslie Phillips was, as her marketing indelicately dubbed her, “the Cyndi Lauper of Christian Pop.” Her 1984 album Dancing with Danger spawned the treacly Sunday Morning Service “Special Music” staple “Strength of My Life,” a song that seemed robotically engineered to appeal to Christian Radio’s sexist archetype “Becky.” (For as much flack as Christian pop singers get, the worst you could accuse them of was being cheesy; Christian radio, on the other hand, was downright insidious). Her trajectory seemed to be pointed skyward -- in every possible sense. Christian parents loved her for her direct and often artless lyrics (one of her early albums was called Black & White in a Grey World), as well as the fact that her music felt just contemporary enough without being dangerous.

And then came The Turning, her 1987 masterpiece in which she shuffled off the coils of Christian music with breathtaking finality and, in the process, produced a work of both tremendous beauty and unflinching honesty. Where previous Phillips records were shellacked with pre-programmed synths, slap bass and huge exclamation points of guitar, The Turning opens with “River of Love,” a song constructed from brittle acoustic guitar and Phillips’ aching voice. More arresting than the song’s arrangement, though, were its lyrics, which spoke of doubt and fear and human violence and the struggle to find some warmth and meaning beneath them. It’s a pained, haunting song, full of small details that heighten its mournful center -- the river of love runs through our life; the river of grief floods it.

That song was written by T-Bone Burnett, who had recently and somewhat curiously entered the orbit of Christian music. Burnett produced The Turning and, according to lore, also began a physical relationship with Phillips that would have tanked her Christian music career, if she’d still been interested in having one (the two would marry in 1989 and divorce in 2004). Burnett and Phillips belonged to a rising contingent of smart, curious, progressive Christian musicians that was emerging at the time -- among them Tonio K. and Mark Heard -- and The Turning felt like a bold statement of purpose for the group, suggesting Christian music had plenty of room for pain and uncertainty and broader takes on spirituality.

Except that it didn’t. The artists commonly identified with this splinter sect remained marginalized, and The Turning was greeted with deep dismay -- bolstered by a now infamous Los Angeles concert promoting the record, where the pearl-clutching Christian faithful found Phillips’ dress and stage demeanor “scandalous” and “worldly” and -- as they did with all artists who failed to conform to their restrictive view of religion -- cast Phillips out as if she were possessed.

It was all fine and good, though, because Phillips was on her way out anyway. The year after The Turning was released, she re-emerged on Virgin Records as Sam Phillips, and began a career that continues to this day. But The Turning still stands as a testament to the power of what Christian music could be and do when it allowed itself to simply exhale and be human. The title track, a shivery number with tense guitar and weird fortune-teller percussion, seemed to telegraph Phillips’ intentions. She begins it announcing, “The turning from light to shadow/ from burning to indifference” before pleading in its chorus, “And when it turns on me, don’t let it turn me.” The jittery “Beating Heart” echoes the same theme, flipping the finger to Christian music’s depiction of Earth as a miserable place to kill time until the Rapture by declaring, “My fear is to leave here never having really arrived.” Just one song later comes the pointed “Expectations,” where Phillips sings, “You lock me up with your expectations/ loosen the pressure you choked me with/ I can’t breathe.”

But despite its plentiful airing of grievances, The Turning is more than just a declaration of independence. What gives the record its enduring power is the fact that it’s an honest depiction of an individual actually wrestling with faith instead of merely accepting it. God turns up multiple times on The Turning, always as a higher power, and always someone that Phillips is struggling to understand. In the quietly surging and devastatingly beautiful “Answers Don’t Come Easy,” Phillips sings to God directly, “I can wait, it’s enough to know you can hear me.” For all its restlessness, “Beating Heart” still concludes with Phillips singing, “To face my best try, I know I need someone who is higher.” And maybe this is what subconsciously troubled Phillips’ Christian fans, more than the miniskirts or the music’s dark sound: the fact that she was admitting that Christianity was complicated, that belief often was not enough, and that, like it or not, faith and struggle were inextricably linked.

The album ends with the campfire folk song “God Is Watching You,” a song I’d always written off as The Turning’s lone sop to Christian radio, a number she and Burnett probably banged out in four minutes and wrote in roughly half that. But revisiting it now, I’m not so sure. Unlike the rest of The Turning, it’s lyrics are almost childishly straightforward: “When your life’s about to start/ God is watching you/ When you have a shattered heart/ God is watching you.” That rousing, repeated refrain of “God is watching you” feels at first like the sharp scold of a Sunday School teacher. But all these years later, the song scans more like a bookend to the album-opening “River of Love,” echoing its themes of constancy in a similar musical milieu. Even more than that, though -- the key to this song is the verb: God is watching. He’s not intervening, He’s not healing, He’s not helping. He’s watching -- passive, quiet, almost distant. Herein lies the whole gorgeous duality of The Turning: that there is a God, that he’s always present, but that he is also often frustratingly remote. It was a God in which Christian music had no interest, and though the subculture has since revised its views on The Turning (it was named the eighth best Christian album of all time by genre Bible CCM), its shunning is a fair indication of the fear-driven mindset of contemporary Christianity in the mid ‘80s. That it was relegated to the Christian Music closet is sadly ironic. It might have been just the record that every Becky -- male, female and otherwise -- needed to hear.

[jedwardkeyes]

Altar Boys, “Gut Level Music” // [Frontline Records, 1986]

Like the Replacements without the beer buzz or a bunch of Southern California kids writing the blueprint for Against Me!, the Altar Boys grew out of the same Calvary Chapel incubator that launched Undercover and Daniel Amos and rapidly moved beyond cluster-bombing punk rock into something more streamlined and melodic. Where Undercover were writing soda-pop testimonials (at least early on) and Daniel Amos focused on heat-warped razor-sharp social satire, the Altar Boys’ songs were decidedly evangelistic. Most of their bruising 1986 high-water mark Gut Level Music is directed outward -- “to all the hearts that have been broken,” is how frontman Mike Stand phrases it on album opener “You Are Loved” -- intent on convincing the unconvinced. The album’s title spells out that mission in code: “In your gut you know He’s there/ He’s on a level you can understand/ He’s in the music that you hear.”

In many of their songs, the Altar Boys executed a dizzying philosophical gymnastics, adopting punk’s rebellious posturing, but flipping it so that the object of their rebellion was a culture that was drifting from what they considered moral absolutes. What’s fascinating now is the way this stance suggests that the notion of rebellion is a matter of perspective. When Stand & Co. considered America, they didn’t see a culture that remained fundamentally Christian in ethos, but rather one that didn’t share their literal read of the Bible and, in some pockets, didn’t have much use for the notion of God at all. The result created feelings of marginalization, and set up the Altar Boys to be stalwarts against what they saw as the country’s philosophical drift. Fortunately, this notion turns up in only one regrettable song on G.L.M. -- the rest of it is both surprisingly big-hearted and masterfully executed. It is arguably one of the best and most consistent Christian rock records ever made.

Much of that has to do with the fact that Stand had an almost supernatural knack for rough-and-tumble punk melody. Even though much of G.L.M. hovers around the same musical terrain as the Replacements circa Pleased to Meet Me, right down to Stand’s blown-out, gravel-gargling vocals, it’s ragged and defiant in attitude. It redefines Christianity in its own terms, rejecting church culture in favor of a relational view of spirituality. On the bruising “I’m Not Talking About Religion,” Stand sets his sights on the Christian-Industrial Complex, hollering, “I’m not talking about religion/ I’m not talking about just a belief/ I’m not talking to going to church, no/ That’s not Christianity.” On G.L.M., Christianity is depicted as dizzying romantic euphoria, one capable of eradicating -- or, at least, temporarily alleviating -- whatever personal traumas the listener is suffering. They even rewrite Donna Summer & Musical Youth’s “Unconditional Love,” grafting its chorus alongside verses that enthusiastically describe the forgiveness of God.

On “You Found Me,” against corkscrewing guitars, Stand puts himself on the other end of the lens, singing of his emotional destitution before he discovered God. The song is taut and tense, sounding at times like a slowed-down Saints song, Stand working against its minor-key setting to sing about his rebirth. And on “There is A Love,” they veer into sun-dappled alt-country balladry, once again turning their attention to their audience with lyrics that offer God as a cure for sorrow and hopelessness. The band bleeds sincerity, so much so that it’s easy to forgive the lyrics’ binary approach to complicated issues. They treat the roaring album-ender “Life Begins at the Cross,” (the title of which I can’t see without thinking of this) like their last desperate shot at getting their message across. They revisit all of the album’s recurring motifs -- sad, broken people (most of them, interestingly, living in the city), wandering, aimless people and people who feel shoved to the margins, offering God as a way to feel loved and accepted. It’s because this message comes from such a clear place of empathy -- Stand never sings like he pities his audience, but like he relates to them -- that G.L.M.’s relentless proselytizing never feels hectoring.

The one unfortunate exception to all of this is “I Question It,” where Stand goes after ‘80s Christianity’s favorite targets, evolution and abortion. It’s here Stand’s insistence on seeing the world in black and white shores up its nastiest consequences, treating both of these topics not as nuanced, multi-faceted subjects, but as a simple “yes/no” ballot. For a record that seems designed to make people feel welcome, the song strikes a pungent, sour note. Amidst songs about love, peace and acceptance, it’s the one reminder that Christian culture in the mid ‘80s didn’t come without a few barbed-wire strings.