It was a given that the new Switchfoot CD would be oozing with professionalism ~ the quality, the sound mixing, all the various sound effects... it's a piece of art in itself. Unfortunately, it's not really all that exciting.
The music is hard to describe. It's anything but cookie cutter or formulaic. But at the same time it doesn't mean that everything they do works, either. It's professional, creative, and cool, but nothing with the instant catchiness of "Gone" or "Meant to Live." It's the sort of interesting, elegant stuff that builds up and comes down and grows on you after awhile.
I'm not sure what all the songs are about. At first glance, it seems to be nothing more than an everything-sucks album. "I want more than my desperation... Maybe I'm the one to blame... Everyone dies... My heart is darker than these oceans... It'll be a day like this one when the world caves in... I've got a wound that doesn't heal... Everything is broken... I am the crisis..." A far cry from the hope-and-encouragement message of Beautiful Letdown.!
If you look deeper, you realize that it's not so much "the world is falling apart and I'm depressed," but more like, "the world is falling apart and I want to be somewhere else." I can infer that "somewhere else" is heaven, but Switchfoot, while recognizing problems, doesn't really offer any real solutions. I think they're falling into the crossover paradox: You don't want to be too Christian, or you'll turn people off and you can't witness to them. But if you leave out the Christianity altogether, you're not witnessing to them anyway.
Two exceptions are "Golden," which is an encouraging you-are-worth-something song (although not nearly as powerful as "Dare You To Move,") and "Easier Than Love," which just frankly says that sex has pervaded our culture and media and is unfortunately easier than love.
It's obvious that Switchfoot is talented and has money to spend on professional sound quality and mixing. It's obvious that they realize the world's full of problems. But it's not obvious that they realize that God is the solution. We can only hope for that in the next album.
Edmond the Hun
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