Citizens and Matthew Perryman Jones

In the absence of a new post, I thought I'd share a few neat videos I've seen recently.

These two are about the coolest music vids I've seen. The first is by a band I just discovered - Citizens. They're the worship team for Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church. To be so simple, it's very dramatic.

This second is from one of my favorite albums of 2012, Matthew Perryman Jones's Land of the Living. Like most of the songs on the record, it's hard to say whether I've deciphered the meaning correctly or not, but with this one, I suspect my hunch is correct. Not to ruin it, but I hint that baptism and sin are major themes.

Enjoy,
Longish

The Lost Art of Lament - Boston, Texas, and Gosnell

The trench is dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters
Torn apart
 

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

How long...

How long must we sing this song?

How long, how long... 

~U2, Sunday,Bloody Sunday

We all know what it feels like to be homesick. The many months in a foreign land, the unfamiliar sounds of a different country. After the hours on the road, you drag yourself indoors, ready for the weariness and discomfort to cease, ready to embrace that unconditional lover: the couch. 

But sometimes, there are problems that have no solution. Ever had a dream in your head? Perfect and untouched, the idea for a poem, or a book, or a piece of art? But when you take up the pen, the words cannot describe it. You know exactly what you’re talking about, but everything you try feels wrong, a futile attempt to describe a greater truth. You throw language at an object, but nothing captures the essence of it. The painting is just a scrawled crayon glimpse of an uncapturable vision. Sometimes, we feel a hunger that nothing satisfies.

The Silence of God

Today, more than ever, I feel the deep brokenness of the world. That Man could do such things, such brutal, animal, cruel things to innocent children, makes one want to scream at the heavens, why? Why?

I am not one to ask why the world is broken, or what would have been if it was not - it is enough that it is. But I was sitting at the computer, wondering whether it was okay to be hurt about this. The world is broken, but am I allowed to doubt God? To ask why? If I believe in heaven, why does this hurt so much? Then I came to a song that I had heard many times, but as has so often happened before, this time I really listened.

He Has Given You a Name

(All scripture quotations are taken from The Severely Dramatized Gospel of Longish.)

When somebody meets you, what’s the first thing they ask? If you’re not me, it probably won’t be “Oh my gosh! Can I have your autograph?” But even us famous people are asked “What’s your name?” occasionally. After that, it’s generally “What do you do?” or “Where are you from?” Those questions are the basic building blocks for forming a mental portrait of other people. If you’re from up North, you probably won’t be interested in the latest Redskins game. If you’re a mechanic, you probably won’t be too interested in philosophy. But even though a name doesn’t tell us much anymore, it’s still one of the first things asked.

Why is that? Back in the day, it was because folk wanted to know who your pa and ma were. Before that, to what tribe or feudal lord you owed your allegiance. And way, way, back, in ancient Israel, it was to know who you were meant to be. These days, it’s just a formality, but in the patriarch Jacob’s day, names meant a heck of a lot.

Light for the Lost Boy - a Review

I remember the day of the Tennessee Flood,
The sound of the scream
and the sight of the blood.
My son he saw as the animal died
in the jaws of the dog as the river ran by,
He said, "Come back soon."

It takes guts to start an album with lines like that. When I first heard them, I was surprised and intrigued. And right from the get-go, Andrew Peterson fans, both new and old, aren’t quite sure what to expect. Unlike his previous albums, Lost Boy is immediately dark and brooding, while at the same time deep and satisfying.

The instrumental backing, (and in particular, the addition of the epic drumming of Will Chapman—yes, son of Steven Curtis) is much broader than with earlier records. Gone are the folksy banjos and fiddles, enter drums and mournful electric guitar. While unusual at first, I quickly decided it was cool, and it certainly still had that Andrew Peterson vibe to it (references to thunder and mountains, and at least one song with hammered dulcimer).

Come Back Soon, the opening track, introduces the main theme of the album: loss of innocence. The album draws inspiration from both The Yearling and Peter Pan, and there is frequent imagery of a boy, lost in the woods. In some ways, starting the album with Come Back Soon feels like starting off right where his previous record, Counting Stars, left off. Counting Stars ends with the lines,

I know that I don’t know what I’m asking,

But I long, Lord, I long to look you full in the face,

I am ready for the Reckoning.