On the way to the beach on Sunday for a service day, helping our students learn about creation care, a student grabbed my iPod and started from A going to Z looking at all of my music. Every time he came across a band he knew, he called out, “you like…?” The student was surprised by how many bands we both listen to. What followed was a twenty-minute conversation about music between the students in my car and myself. What emerged, other than the similar bands we both like, was this student’s love for music, but more importantly, how much music helped this student process his own life. Music has that ability; through listening to the experiences of another, we minister to our own experiences.
One music genre that gained popularity among adolescents during the early 21st century is called “emo,” short for “emotional rock,” birthed in the 1980s and 90s with bands such as Rites of Spring and Sunny Day Restate. Emo wasn’t allows synonymous with depression and self-affliction, as many of today’s students believe, in fact in the late 1990s it was a genre of rock blowing up in the independent and Christian music world. In 1998 with the rise of this new rock music genre, a small Florida band of Christians named Further Seems Forever, emerged on the music scene, with a lead singer, who according to Andy Greenwald, the writer of Nothing Feels Good, would become the face of emo. You might have never even heard of this small Christian band, Further Seems Forever, but over their time as a band, from 1998 to 2006, they had three different lead singers, three studio albums, and where a part of Tooth & Nail Records. Yet, all of their accomplishments pale in comparison to their former singer, Chris Carrabba, who later became the founder and lead singer of Dashboard Confessional.
Dashboard Confessional’s beginnings were meek and difficult; Carrabba began by going on punk tours with friends, playing solo between sets with nothing but an acoustic guitar, a stool to sit on, and his voice. Soon, the short quiet boy with a great voice and unique song writing ability from Florida started getting big. After recording the small and unknown album entitled Drowning EP, Carrabba, was signed to the pop-punk record label Drive Thru Records and released “Swiss Army Romance” in 2000After signing and putting out his first album Carrabba left Drive Thru Records and signed with Vagrant Records for unknown reasons. It is on Vagrant Records that he put out his then groundbreaking record, The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, with the single and newly full band verse track “Screaming Infidelities,” Dashboard Confessional’s first radio hit. Soon Carrabba’s voice became the sound track of heartbroken college and high school students all over the country. With Dashboard Confessional’s fame on the rise Carrabba’s ended his solo act ended and became a fun band re-recording solo songs, writing a new EP, and even appearing on MTV’s Unplugged.
The rest is history; the boy with simple punk roots was a national artist with videos on both MTV and VH1. Carrabba’s original followers cried out heresy when he recorded his first album with an electric guitar, A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar, in 2003. Whether Carrabba’s originality was lost when he “blew up,” when Dashboard Confessional became a full band, or it was that the band had been copied too much, no one can really say, but something had changed. What became clearer and clearer to everyone was that he was no longer the original inventive artist he once was when playing his randomly tuned acoustic guitar with passion. What Carrabba and his band mates called “maturity,” was interpreted by listeners as another “top 40 hit” put out by the recording industry. Carrabba even ventured back to his acoustic roots with 2007’s The Shade of Poison Trees, but it fell short and sold almost 90,000 less in the first week of sales than his last “marketable” album.
It has been over two year since Carrabba has released anything, but this week he released his new record Alter the Ending. The vaguely entitled album offers a new direction for Carrabba; while The Shade of Poison Trees offered a glimpse of things to come, “Alter the Ending” is Carraba’s most mature album to date, lyrically. No longer does he cathartically deal with the antics of his past relationships like a 17-year-old high school boy, he lyrically searches for answers in his past.
The first song of the album will most likely catch most listeners by surprise; entitled “get me right,” in the song Carrabba returns to his roots, not musically, but spiritually. In this song Carrabba seems to not only be making peace with his past, but is also seeking to return to his maker, crying out, “I made my way home, limpin’ on broken bones, out of the thickest pines, across the county line, onto your wooden stairs, I know you can repair, I know you’ve seen the light I know you’ll get me right.” While at first one can conjecture whom Carrabba is speaking of, throughout the song it becomes much clearer as he calls out, “Well, Jesus I’ve fallen.” With authenticity that any pastor would love to hear from his/her people, Carrabba sings, “I’ve struggled so hard to believe, I’ll meet my maker, I need my maker, to cure me from my doubting blood and drain me of the sin I’ve loved and take from me my disbelief, I know it should come easily, but it remains inside of me.”
This spiritual turn is not new in the post-emo-punk music scene. In 2006, long time emo-pop-punk band Brand New released the song, God and the Devil Are Raging Inside Me, as a part of their single “Jesus Christ.” Brand New has released albums that are not typically “Christian Music,” and rather has defiant spiritual overtones dealing with issues such as death, anger, community, and yes, even Jesus himself. Brand New’s biggest change came during their headlining tour in the fall of 2008, when they announced from stage “that they only wanted to tour with people who they ‘want to be around’ and who are healthy to be around”. Since then Brand New has gathered a community of Christian tour mates, including bands like mewithoutYou, Thrice, Anathallo, and Jeremy Enigk, even taking the up-coming “Christian”/spiritual band Manchester Orchestra under their wings.
Carrabba’s new CD differs from the others that have come before is because he has created an album that invites his listeners to journey with him through his process of searching for redemption. Dashboard Confessional’s album is not what I would call “Christian,” or even “spiritual,” it is a step in a new direction. Carrabba still openly talks about the “sin” he struggles with, especially in the song, “The Motions.” In the song, Carrabba confesses how the chemicals released during sexual activities control much of his actions, confessing, “if this is chemical I am not ashamed to be owned by the impulses of science.” He even states in “No News is Bad News,” “what makes you so sure that our sins are the start of something holy divine?” Since his break out hit “Hands Down,” Carrabba has leaned toward sexually driven songs, referring to his escapades with girls. One has to wonder through how many of these songs Carrabba is recounting his search for love and redemption amongst the opposite sex, instead of in God. (See lyrics to “get me right” and compare themes of love and redemption)
Approaching the end of the album, in the song “Water to Bridges,” Carrabba sings out, “this weight, these words are tearing me apart, that’s enough for a back to break, that’s enough for a lot to take. And I have been paying for it since I drove my girl away. And that’s the song of a solemn man, I’ll make the best of the best I can…” What is revealed in this concluding song is a man who is searching his past in hopes of salvation; crying out “save me from the grey life, I have paid the price with my soul. Oh, save me!” Finally the album concludes with the words, “it is hard to belong to a girl or a song in the case of a selfish believer, it is strange to be lost, stranger still to belong on the strings of a twisting line... from the path from the grass to the grave I will love you still, and when the sand turns to glass and all that left is the past, I will love you still.”
Whether or not this album is Carrabba’s Christian re-birth is not the point. The album Alter The Ending goes beyond the catergory of “Christian music.” What emerges is a man struggling to find redemption and love through searching his past. This is the beauty of this album; it is true to life, even a Christian life. There are many teenage boys and girls who are seeking to find love and redemption from their past and in the mist of their mistakes. “Alter the Ending” is a CD that can help students process their pasts, presents, and futures in hopes of finding redemption. I encourage you to guild students through this CD, ask them questions, discuss, and find meaning in the words and melodies of a man who is seeking discover the same things they are, love and redemption. Blessings in all you do my friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment