Mixtapemotions

  • “We’ve Only Just Begun” by Run Kid Run, Monday, November 20, 2023


































    In 1996, David Josiah Curtis and friends formed a punk band called Side Walk Slam. The Southern Illinois-based band released an independent record, Rock Anthems from the Midwest, in 1999 before signing to a small label, Boot to Head Records, and releasing Two Steps Forward, Five Steps Back the next year. Then in 2001, the band signed with Tooth & Nail Records and released three records between 2001 and 2003. Little by little, the bare-bones punk rock band started incorporating more and more production on their records. By their 2003 record, And We Drive, the band even included a piano. After releasing And We Drive, the band decided that Side Walk Slam had strayed from their Punk Rock sound so much that they decided to change their name, rebranding with a new sound and retiring the expectations that the band would sound a particular way. 


    YOU’LL HAVE YOUR UPS AND DOWNS. Run Kid Run released their debut record This Is Who We Are three years after Side Walk Slam released their final album. The three years between releases was a long period compared to the way that Side Walk Slam ground out a record year between 1999 and 2003. The band recorded their debut record with James Paul Wisner, who had produced Further Seems Forever, Dashboard Confessional, New Found Glory, and Underoath. The new sound of Run Kid Run was poppy and singable. The band’s video for “We’ve Only Just Begun” was even featured in American Eagle stores. Was this the band’s big break as Relient K’s video for “Sadie Hawkins Dance” was played in Abercrombie and Fitch stores? 

    YOU’VE GOT YOUR DESTINATION. Run Kid Run fully embraced the Christian pop genre with their second record, 2008’s Love at the Core. Their piano ballad “Freedom” shows how far the band went from their punk rock roots. On the Labeled Podcast, lead singer David Josiah Curtis talked about their sophomore album being the band’s peak and their inability to follow up the record because of the seismic change in the Christian music industry between their second and third record, 2011’s Patterns. He talked about touring with Hawk Nelson and thinking about seeing that band as a model of success in the Christian music industry—headlining church shows, and touring on a bus. But success is a model based on inequality, and simply putting in the time in the music industry doesn’t necessarily equate to success. Run Kid Run disappeared after their third record. Curtis took a part-time position at a church, and the other band members started taking more time with their families. The band played a few one-off shows, but ultimately haven’t come back with a full-length since Patterns. However, in 2022, the band reunited, not as Run Kid Run, but as Side Walk Slam to play the Audiofeed festival in their home of Illinois. Curtis explained that the band felt free to play both Side Walk Slam and Run Kid Run songs under their original moniker. Punk Rock purists just have to put aside the band’s love for a catchy melody.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “All Over Me” by The Benjamin Gate, Sunday, November 19, 2023

    In 2001, South African Christian Rock band The Benjamin Gate arrived in The United States and signed with ForeFront Records after sending a demo to Nashville to be  mastered. David Bach at ForeFront heard the demo, and the band and their manager and co-songwriter Marc Theodosiou headed to America. At the end of the ‘90s, ForeFront Records was one of the top Christian Rock labels. The label had released the album that had defined ‘90s Christian Rock, dc talk’s Jesus Freak in 1995. Closing out the decade, the label released Audio Adrenaline’s Underdog, Rebecca St. James’ Pray, and Raze’s Power. DC Talk had released their final studio album, Supernatural,  in 1998. In the new millennium, ForeFront Records was looking for the new sound in Christian Rock. 


    JESUS’ LOVE IS. ForeFront opened the millennium by releasing a greatest hits record from dc talk. The next year, the label released solo records from each member of the trio. Michael Tait formed the band Tait with Pete Stewart, guitarist and former lead singer of ‘80s and early ‘90s “Heaven’s Metal” band Grammatrain. Tait released Empty.   Kevin Max released Stereotype Be, the least successful of the solo records. The runaway success of DC Talk’s disbanding was TobyMac’s career, which kicked off with the Nu-metal, rap-rock energy-packed Momentum. There was a decided shift away from the Modern Rock sound in the early ‘00s as far as ForeFront Records was concerned. In 2000, the label released the debut record from Stacie Orrico, Genuine. Orrico landed a tour with Destiny’s Child and by 2003 had two hits on Top 40 radio. Also in 2000, Rebecca St. James released Transform, a shift toward the electronic pop sounds on the radio. But the label didn’t completely succumb to pop music. 

    ALL COME, ALL FALL, ALL WALK WITH HEARTS SO TORN. Christian Hit Radio (CHR) is a genre of music that never really took off. In the early ‘00s, it was rock that wasn’t too heavy and CCM that wasn’t too sleepy. I talked about the sub-genre when I talked about Air1 earlier this year, and I certainly would love to dig into that genre and maybe resurrect Katy Hudson’s self-titled album, the Christian album Katy Perry made before becoming the massive pop star she became in the late ‘00s. Adult Contemporary—safe for the whole family—radio stations preferred lighter CCM. But on Saturday Night, those stations would play Christian Rock, Pop, and sometimes Hip-Hop. And some rock radio stations would also play Christian Rock or “Positive” Rock on Sunday mornings. In the early ‘00s, ForeFront Records had a few bands to offer the rock market. The biggest seller was TobyMac’s Momentum, but the label also had success with Pax217’s two records. But The Benjamin Gate was perhaps the best example of a band that the label could market both to the hard rock and CHR formats. The band’s first single, “All Over Me” was both alternative, sounding modern enough to play both on pop and rock radio. The band also had harder songs like “Scream” and “Lay It Down.” The band had calmer electronic songs like “Nightglow.” The band was part of a burgeoning new alternative rock sound sweeping through Christian Rock along with Earthsuit, Pillar, and Phil Joel—bands that wound up on a three-year annual traveling rock show called Festival Con Dios. ForeFront Records faded into obscurity. There was the 2007 release of their Anberlin/Fall Out Boy-copycat band This Beautiful Republic and their 2008 follow-up. But Flicker Records, Tooth & Nail, and Gotee’s Mono vs Stereo quickly became the dominant sound in Christian Rock.

  • “Blisters and Coffee” by The Classic Crime, Saturday, November 18, 2023

    The Classic Crime released their debut album Albatross in 2006 on Tooth & Nail Records. The album charted on Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums charts, and the band quickly became connected with both the Christian and the pop-punk scene, touring with fellow Tooth & Nail acts, joining the Warped Tour, and forming friendships with the likes of Relient K and Emery. The band filmed a music video for the first track on the album, “The Fight,” which appeared on TVU. In 2006, Tooth & Nail was in the middle of its golden age. Albums were selling and bands were bridging the divide between Cornerstone and Warped Tour. The Classic Crime was supposed to be the label’s next big band, but Albatross didn’t meet the label or the band’s sales expectations. 


    OUT ON THIS LONELY LANDSCAPE I AM FINALLY FREE. The Classic Crime’s debut album, Albatross, was produced by Michael “Elvis” Baskette. The band would work with the Baskette on most of their albums until 2017’s How to Be Human. Baskette’s work as a producer began in 2003 with Puddle of Mudd. His production credits mostly include active rock bands such as Chevelle, Cold, and Alter Bridge; however, two years before producing Albatross for Tooth & Nail Records, Baskette produced Falling Up’s sophomore album, Dawn Escapes. The Classic Crime’s albums and especially Falling Up’s sophomore album seem to be outliers in Baskette’s discography. The Classic Crime, in particular, tends to be more associated with the late Emo scene. Lead singer and lyricist Matt MacDonald’s lyrics hint at a poetic influence. Songs like “Flight of Kings” and “Warrior Poet” paint images in the listener’s minds. While the album stays mostly electronic guitar-heavy, several sappy tracks are scattered throughout the record from “Who Needs Air?” to “All the Memories” to the album’s closer “Headlights.”


    DESPERATE WE WILL LIFT UP OUR HANDS. Reviews for Albatross were mixed. The album, however, wasn’t reviewed by any major publications. Christian music site Indie Vision Music gave the album a positive review as did Sputnik Music. However, JesusFreakHideout gave the album 2.5 stars out of 5, calling The Classic Crime “the Christian Fall Out Boy.” With later Classic Crime records, the website reviewed the band favorably with the exception of 2017’s BadChristian-released How to Be Human, which featured an f-bomb. With a glut of Christian-adjacent rock, Albatross speaks to a time when every record label was looking for their version of Anberlin and Tooth & Nail was hoping to replace the band when the band inevitably would sign with a major label. But calling The Classic Crime a direct copy of Fall Out Boy or Anberlin certainly doesn’t fit. Albatross is better than the JesusFreakHideout review suggests, but it’s probably not a record a lot of listeners are nostalgic for. The songs fit well on playlists when you are listening to the giants of the Tooth & Nail giants, but I don’t find myself returning to Albatross very often. It’s rougher than the polished Anberlin and Falling Up, but tame compared to the Underoath and Emery. But every now and then you want a few blisters with your coffee, letting out that teen angst.


    Read the lyrics on Genius.



     

  • “Newton’s Apple” by Nell, Friday, November 17, 2023































    In February of 2014, Nell released their album Newton’s Apple, culminating in a theme the band had explored on two EPs starting in 2012. The band broke their conscription-imposed hiatus in 2012 with the album Slip Away, released in April. In December, the band returned with a four-song EP Holding onto Gravity, the first in their gravity series. Next, the band released the EP Escaping Gravity in 2013. Newton’s Apple was the band’s full-length follow-up to 2012’s Slip Away. Released as a two-disc album, the first disc contained new songs, and the second one contained the two EPs Holding onto Gravity and Escaping Gravity, making 21 songs loosely based on gravity. The title track, was an electronic ballad in English, comparing falling for the subject of the song “like Newton’s apple hit the ground.”


    IT WAS  LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER OF NEVER ENDING QUESTIONS.  formed in 1999 after the four members failed the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT or suneung/ 수능). The test, held on the third Thursday of November (yesterday in Korea) determines which university students can attend and what they are qualified to study in university. Many students who fail the exam study another year to qualify for a better university. Singer Kim Jong-wan, guitarist Lee Jae-kyung, bassist Lee Jung-hoon, and drummer Jung Jae-won, the members of Nell, however, decided to pursue music instead. The band started playing in the Sincheon’s indie music scene where groups like Busker Busker and Hyukoh would play years later. The band’s two 2001 independent albums Reflection of and Speechless helped to bring back emotional rock, a genre in Korea that had been present in the ballad of the ‘80s and ‘90s but had started to shift mostly to idol music in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. The band was discovered by K-pop legend, Seo Taiji, who founded both a Korean metal band in the late ‘80s and the first idol group in 1994. Nell has been producing music successfully since signing on Seo’s label Goesoo Indigene in 2002, though they later signed to another company in 2006 and most recently Space Bohemian.


    I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU. Billboard ranked Nell’s Newton’s Apple as the second-best K-pop album of 2014 behind 2ne1’s Crush. The album took the band to America for the first time, where they performed at SXSW’s K-pop Night Out showcase. While idol groups are certainly the focus of most critics and listeners alike, a band like Nell and other bands from Korea, though they belong to a different genre of music, have gained international listeners thanks to the growing interest in K-pop, especially since around 2013 when the SXSW K-pop Night Out showcase began. But today’s song isn’t even in Korean. Before BTS recorded their English-language hits, becoming the first South Korean act to top Billboard’s Hot 100, Nell had been recording English songs on their early LPs. “Newton’s Apple” is one of the English tracks on their 2014 album. The heavily auto-tuned love ballad muses about love. It’s about being hit on the head by love, just as Newton was hit on the head when sitting beneath an apple tree. 


     

  • “Three Days Later “ by FM Static, Thursday, November 16, 2023

































    We’re back to 2003 today, a year we’ve been visiting a lot recently. I’d argue that it was 2003 that made Tooth & Nail Records the biggest label producing mainstream Christian Rock, though the old school Tooth & Nail fans would be quick to point to the ‘90s with MxPx, The O.C. Supertones, and Plankeye. Still, Tooth & Nail seemed more fringe for the conservative listenership in Christian Rock compared to the rosters of ForeFront, Squint, Gotee, and Flicker Records, who signed bands with the intention of ministry. But in 2003, Tooth & Nail released a ton of albums with crossover appeal. On top of the crossover appeal of Tooth & Nail’s catalog, the label started to sign groups that had been established in Christian Rock. Thousand Foot Krutch was one of the acts. But before the band’s genre-transitioning Phenomenon, TFK’s drummer, Steve Augustine, and lead singer, Trevor McNevan, released an album on Tooth & Nail Records with their side project, FM Static.


    I MADE A WISH ON A SHOOTING STAR. Thousand Foot Krutch’s Phenomenon shifted the band away from rap-rock. Singer Trevor McNevan trades rap verses for fast, rhythmic singing to hard rock. Lyrically, Krutch talks about spiritual matters and has quite a few “fight songs. It’s bro rock about having a beef with someone–Satan, other Christians who don’t understand them, the secular haters who mock Christians. Of course, there’s always the one ministry slow ballad for Air1. Then there was the punk rock side project, FM Static. In 2003, the band released their debut album on Tooth & Nail Records, What Are You Waiting For? Whereas the lyrics on Phenomenon are about the world being against you, What Are You Waiting For? is much less serious. The setting of most of the songs is school. This summer both Church Jams Now and Good Christian Fun talked about the album, and the hosts came to a similar conclusion: the lyrics sound like middle schoolers thinking about how awesome high school is going to be. 

    OUR SHADOWS GROW UNDERNEATH THE STREETLIGHTS ‘TIL THEIR OVERGROWN. If I were ranking my favorite albums from 2003, FM Static’s debut record certainly wouldn’t make the cut. It’s saccharine in a way that will leave you a little sick after the 11 tracks. Lyrically, the tracks don’t leave much to talk about–though we should do a deep dive into “Crazy Mary” sometime. It’s all about parties (without drinking or sex), girls the speaker is obsessed with, and rocking out to hip-hop and Michael Jackson. There’s the obligatory, faith-sharing “Something to Believe In,” and the interesting reference to “watching Harry Potter” in “Definitely Maybe.” Still, there’s a nostalgic factor to this sound–maybe not this album for me. It was a time with sappy songs by Simple Plan. Relient K was certainly the top of the Christian witty lines, but there were a ton of copycat bands–Hawk Nelson, Stellar Kart, heck even Anberlin’s “Foreign Language” could have brought the band into the realm of lighthearted joke songs. FM Static just so happened to be the output of two members of a prolific songwriter. And if you can look back at your yearbook without cringing, why not enjoy a little bit of the Class of ‘03?










  • “Machines” by Paradise Now, Wednesday, November 15, 2023 (updated repost)

    Imagine being a new band in 2019, releasing your first EP which has earned enough hype to put you on a big tour with a veteran band, only to have that tour canceled because the industry came to a halt with the pandemic. That’s what happened to brothers Sam and Ben Taylor and their friend Nathan Beaton of Paradise Now. The Welsh band did not tour with Disciple in 2020 as planned, however, they released an extra EP called Lockdown Mixtape to lead up to their full-length debut, We Never Die, both released in 2021. The band’s social media has been quiet since the release of the LP.

    IT’S GETTING OLD. In 2019, Tooth & Nail Records revealed that they had signed a new band. The label posted a photo of the band’s silhouette and asked fans to guess who had been signed. I commented “dc talk?” which got a few laughs from the community. Sometimes when a band is signed with Tooth & Nail Records, listeners know who the band is. Often it’s a band connected to the scene; someone who has opened for a bigger Tooth & Nail act. Often these bands have a well-grown pre-signee fanbase. On the Labeled Podcast, host Matt Carter has talked about how the label doesn’t usually sign a band from out of the blue. Yet some bands seem random on an otherwise connected label, and Paradise Now seems to have come from out of nowhere. The band’s Spotify biography talks about the band forming an eclectic sound in Wales “without a local music scene.” There are a few famous Welsh bands, such as my bloody valentine, Manic Street Preachers, LOSTPROPHETS, and Badfinger and solo recording artists, such as Tom Jones, Duffy, Donna Lewis, John Cale, and Bonnie Tyler–but according to Paradise Now, the local music scene is just whoever happens to wander into Bridgend, and music lovers couldn’t build a niche rock scene as in America and even London.

    WE’RE BETTER NOW. Unfortunately, it seems that Paradise Now has become the all-too-common story of a Tooth & Nail band underperforming and then disappearing. This month, Spotify shows that Paradise Now has only around nine thousand monthly listeners. However, looking at streaming numbers of other smaller Tooth & Nail bands, Paradise Now’s nine thousand monthly streams look average. However, I wonder if Tooth & Nail will resurrect the band. Paradise Now being in Wales seems to be a great barrier to their American audience, especially with being able to jump on tours. Perhaps the band’s momentum was a casualty of the pandemic. But today, we’re not looking at the band’s debut album, but we’re going back to an obscure track on their EP, Supernatural. The band has a tight modern rock sound, influenced by worship music, hard rock, and electronic music. Three of the six songs appear on We Never Die in 2021. “WildOnes” gets a remix and today’s song “Machines” gets an acoustic version on the follow-up EP, Lockdown Mixtape. “Machines” is one of my favorite songs by the band. It showcases lead singer Sam Taylor’s earnest vocals, and the lyrics deal with fighting against “non-stop goals,” being wrong and trying to find “a better way,” and begging the listener “Please don’t judge me quite yet.” It’s also one of my “chilly songs”–creating warmth out of a cold atmosphere. I don’t know when and if we’ll hear anything else from Paradise Now, but I think they are certainly worth a listen.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Lyric video:

    Acoustic version:




  • "I Already See It" by Kye Kye, Tuesday, November 14, 2023 (repost)

    Kye Kye released two albums in the early 2010s. My earliest memory with this indie-electronic band was their single “Broke” on RadioU, which took a while to grow on their listenership, failing to beat the other singles of the week on their “Battle of the Buzz” program. However, when the single was finally released to regular rotation, it quickly topped their “TMW” (Ten Most Wanted) program. That summer, I saw the band perform at Cornerstone in the Come & Live tent before or after Showbread. Lead singer, Olga Yagolnikov Phelan, seemed a little shy when talking to the audience, but the band sounded great when performing. The band’s strength lies in their atmospheric sound rather than their spiritually cryptic lyrics. 


    TAKE YOUR TIME; I ALREADY SEE IT. One Saturday night in college some of my friends and I were invited to one of our professor’s homes. That night the professor taught us a game involving classic issues of National Geographic and a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. This game you had to learn by observation and once you learn the rules, you demonstrate but never say the rules out loud. I watched as my friends started catching on little by little, some catching on quickly, while others were just as frustrated as me. I was the very last one to figure out the game, so my frustration must have given so much joy to everyone in the know. The story of that Saturday night has come to be a metaphor for my old ways of thinking. I used to think that I had the world figured out. I had made some connections when looking at the enigma of classic National Geographic magazines lying on the floor. My religion had helped me interpret the Bible correctly and there was a long history of literature, philosophy, and culture that was just reacting to false religions. If only we could put the parts together. If only we could put aside the human problem with religion, we could solve the puzzle and be at one with the divine.

    IT DOESN’T COME AT ONCE. I grew up with the teaching of progressive revelation. This is a Christian idea in many denominations and a central doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist church that teaches that God doesn’t reveal truth all at once. For Adventists, this explains a clean lineage from Martin Luther to the teachings of Ellen White, collecting only the legalistic aspects of John Calvin. Other churches use progressive revelation to excuse the church’s historical defense of slavery. However, as we are now living in a time of rapid changes in beliefs about wealth inequality, race, gender, and sexuality, the Church continues to be a bulwark behind what those in power hide. Rather than saying that revelation and truth is progressive, the church should rather say, those with white hair will soon be dead. The ones whom the older bigots haven’t run away will have slightly more progressive ideas as times and circumstances allow and will come to power as their hair is turning white. And over time, the church can pretend its atrocities never even happened because the old guard has died off. The most shocking example is the Adventist church in Nazi Germany siding with Hitler. History is carefully forgotten. The organized Church, no matter how you put the pieces together comes up with the same results. And while times seem chaotic, I keep coming back to what I think the central message of this song is: “Love is accepted.” Despite whatever the wrongs “the haters” do, love is about accepting someone no matter what journey they go on. Love is not about subjecting others to your wills. It’s about the journey together. 

    Read “I Already See It” by Kye Kye on Genius.

  • “Be Somebody” by Thousand Foot Krutch + Chilly Mix Apple Music, Monday, November 13, 2023

     

    Slowly, Thousand Foot Krutch is coming back to life with their The End Is Where We Begin recording project. The band is releasing a track-by-track rerecording of the album, and each track features another band. The band has not yet released a new version of today’s song, “Be Somebody.” I can’t remember if “Be Somebody” was released as a single from the album, especially because it was released after I paid attention to Christian radio. However, The End Is Where We Begin” fits the band’s usual formula, with “Be Somebody” being the band’s most standout ballad on the album. This meant that while the hard rock hits would go to RadioU and the ballads would go to Air1. The mid-tempo track is one of Thousand Foot Krutch’s best slow songs. It features Trevor McNevan’s soaring vocals and the acoustic guitars.


    WE’RE ALL SEEN THROUGH JUST LIKE GLASS. Today, I’m bringing my Chilly Mix to Apple Music. Again, it’s very hard to define what creates this musical quality. But somehow these songs create warmth whenever I listen to them. I hope they give you warmth, too. Enjoy!

  • “Will You?” by P.O.D., Sunday, November 12, 2023

    Following up two massively successful albums, The Fundamentals of Southtown and Satellite was a difficult task for “one of the biggest success stories” in Christian music. In 2003 P.O.D. released their fifth studio record Payable on Death—their namesake album. Earlier that year, the band released a song, “Sleeping Awake” for the Matrix: Reloaded. “Sleeping Awake” sounded quite different from the songs on Satellite. Notably, the band had a new guitarist–Jason Truby, replacing longtime member Marcos Curiel. Before joining P.O.D., Truby had been a member of the legendary Christian metal band, Living Sacrifice. In 2003, the Arkansas-based metal band also gave the fellow Arkansas-based band Evanescence the drummer, Rocky Gray.

    THIS TIME I’M SORRY. Maybe really hardcore warriors, the fan army of P.O.D. fans can tell the real story behind the 2003 lineup change. Marcos Curiel, along with drummer Wuv Bernardo, was a founding member of Eschatos, the band that later became P.O.D. The band started out as a metal cover band, playing house parties in San Diego back in 1991. Bernardo invited his cousin, Sonny Sandoval, who had just become a Christian after the death of his mother. The band soon evolved into P.O.D. The line up of the band has stayed almost U2-consistent since the band released their first demo after adding bassist Traa Daniels until Curial left the band between 2003 and 2006. But why did Marcos leave in the first place? Was it to work on his side project, The Accidental Experiment, or was he kicked out of the band for a “difference in beliefs”? MTV News reported Curial’s dissatisfaction with what happened and alluded to the fact that his side project wasn’t Christian as a reason for being kicked out of the band. He also complained about the hypocrisy of how P.O.D. is portrayed to fans compared to how the members on tour or in real life. Whatever the true story is, Sandoval told Yahoo! Music that Truby was the reason the band stayed together. Truby recorded another album, Testify, with P.O.D. before the band reconciled with Curiel in 2006.


    SEE YOU SITTIN’ BY THE WINDOW IN THE BEDROOM. Besides the member switch, Payable on Death was a controversial release due to the album’s cover art. The cover, a sketch depicting a topless woman with butterfly wings covering her breast with her arms, had the album banned from many Christian retailers. It was also thought to be an allusion to the occult. Whether it was poor reviews or the lack of Christian sales, the album sold nowhere near the amount of the two prior Atlantic Records releases. The lead single, “Will You,” reached #12 on both Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock tracks. Lyrically, the song seems to fit into what Therapist, Author, and Podcaster Krispen Mayfield talked about on the Prophetic Imagination Station Podcast (now called This Is the Bad Place Podcast) as shamecore, or music often designed to make its listeners feel shamed. The song is a bit convoluted in terms of the speaker because of the mixture of first person pronouns and third person feminine pronouns, but it seems to ask the second person you if that person will stay with the speaker. The youth group explanation is no–outside of marriage, that person will ultimately leave the speaker broken. The video reinforces the narrative, played out like an episode of Dawson’s Creek. Youth after-school culture: avoiding an alcoholic mom by going to  a house party where there is a sexual experience in the bathroom which ends with the guy washing his hands and the girl crying. The video is a cautionary tale that made me think that was what was going on at public school, so it was best to stick with the youth group kids. Still, it wasn’t unheard of for the youth group kids to be part of this scene.


    Music video:


  • “The Love that Carries Me” by Jonezetta (repost), Saturday, November 11, 2023

     

    The season 2 Labeled podcasts finale concluded the story arc of Tooth & Nail Records’ start from collecting likeminded, DIY-spirited bands to a marketably lucrative record business backed by major- label distribution, a slowing in the market and uncertain times, then back to a purely indie label. As the story goes, the label had signed two bands for general rock radio, The Classic Crime and Jonezetta. These bands were not intended for Christian radio, like how The Juliana Theory had been half a decade before. In 2006, at the time of this marketing strategy, the label was losing some of its most successful acts to major labels. Could the new signees save the label?

    WHEN THE CHORUS DIES, DOES IT KILL YOU TO BE ALONE? Neither bands reached the level Tooth & Nail had planned for them. The Classic Crime has had a successful career, but mostly because the label accidentally marketed them to Christian radio. Jonezetta, however, wasn’t played on RadioU, but I think I bought their first album Popularity in the Family Christian Bookstore after listening to the sample CD that sample CD player in their stores is the reason why I listened to more Christian Rock when I was a teenager because CDs were expensive and it was always disappointing to buy a record and only like one track). Jonezetta was marketed as the Tooth & Nail version of The Killers, Jonezetta got on tours with Anberlin, MuteMath,   Shiny Toy Guns, and Family Force 5. The record Popularity was filled with fun hooks and ‘80s styled dance rock tracks, but “The Love that Carries Me” is in the center of the record, setting a calmer tone on the record. The keyboard and groove of the song seems to be a transition to the sound the band achieved on their next record, Cruel to Be Young. 

    SORRY, SORRY BUT MY WORDS MEAN NOTHING. “The Love that Carries Me” is a song about a misinterpreted song. In the vein of the title track, “Popularity,” many songs on the album deal with the superficiality of popularity. It’s a hipster irony of being “too cool for radio,” but secretly chasing it. The speaker states that “words mean nothing” and that the song is nothing more than an addictive ear worm for kids until they move on to the next thing. But “The Love that Carries” is much more than a trend; it is not a commodity; it is not fast fashion. The album examines popularity from a mid-2000s emo band perspective in ways that groups like The All-American Rejects and Taking Back Sunday arguably did better in their lyrics. “The Love that Carries Me” criticizes the popular kids who keep friendships and relationships to the surface and cast friends aside when things get difficult, and there’s a subtle comparison in the lyrics to people who do that to those who buy records and only scan for the catchy tracks. We cannot regard friends in the way that they are fleeting, otherwise we won’t be loved in the hard times and we will miss out on the deep connections that make us human. I certainly could try to be better friend, to pay back those who have pushed me along. So let’s all think of ways to be a better friend.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.