I still remember
the day I saw that stories were about more than events, but ideas, characters, and
truth. This discovery didn't extend into music until recently. Could there be
an equivalent of great literature in music? I watched the ideas. Andrew
Peterson’s Light for the Lost Boy
takes on the loss of innocence, and ultimate redemption. Matthew Perryman
Jones’s impossibly good Land of the Living is so complex I still haven’t figured it all out, but dabbles in
sin, death, grief, and redemption. I leapt into the stimulating world of ideas
and their expression through music and poetic metaphor.
Sara Groves’s Invisible Empires is a first, though.
She takes on ideas, all right, but ones that you generally wouldn’t find in
music and certainly not in the mainstream CCM. Ideas like: bio-ethics,
escapism, current politically correct ideology, the pressure to conform to
society’s ideal, and death. It sounds more like science fiction topics.
They built a spaceship behind a burrito place. They actually built a ship and recorded an album in it. Whether you think it’s the height of nerdiness or coolness (or both), it shows Andrew Osenga's devotion to this idea.
It’s not as crazy as it sounds. It’s a concept album, about a character named Leonard Belle. Leonard lives in the not-too-distant future, a place when spaceships can move at the speed of light. His life is falling apart. When his wife dies in the midst of a divorce, he finally goes off the deep end. Giving up everything, he takes a job on a space-freighter that will deliver supplies to a far-off outpost. Moving at light-speed, it will only be a year for him, but when he returns to Earth, everyone he knows will be dead. Leonard is pretty desperate to escape his problems. As a catharsis on his year-long journey, he decides to make an album.
I have no idea where the idea came from, but it’s pretty dang original. The result is very true to the idea—it sounds like something a middle-aged guy named Leonard would make, a sort of space-80’s-acoustic-rock mix-up. There are long soulful electric guitar solos, upbeat rock songs, jazzy laments. It’s got a good chunk of catchy songs that I’m still able to enjoy after quite a few listens. My younger brother, who is notorious for his neutrality on music, loves it.
In the end, to risk spoilers, Leonard realizes that going to space isn’t the answer to his problems, and he’s just as lonely as before. “It was not good for man to be alone,” he sings in the song of that name. It doesn’t feature too many great profound statements about humanity, but sometimes something jumps out and surprises me. Anyway, the subject matter is definitely above average stuff-on-the-radio, and it’s great fun to listen to. By and large, a good offering from Andrew Osenga.
Also. He’s wearing a home-made spacesuit on the tour.
