Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing Mutemath roadie Jordan, the Jean-Paul Sartre of van packing...
[If you're subscribed to this blog via email, you will have to click on the post's title to watch any video content (the link will take you my site).
This is so feedburner doesn't clog up your inbox with large files!]
The Christian/Not Christian band for the Crowder generation stepped up to the plate and hit the ball out of the park. Then walked into the car park and hit the ball back into the park. Then did handstands on the piano.
Shame on me for not writing about this album before now. A great group of writers (the Gettys plus Stuart Townend) write theologically profound songs that real people can actually sing! But the killer one-two punch is Kristyn's beautiful voice on top of some incredibly 'right', gimmick-free arrangements. Stand out tracks - Creation Sings The Father's Song & Still, My Soul, Be Still.
I have to give an honourable mention to Lyrycyst's Revolution, but this is why the Internet exists. Listen to it, ponder how it was made and then try and argue that copyright law doesn't need to evolve (if you dare).
Another trait shared with U2 is MuteMath’s ability to have a full and compelling sound even though no one instrument seems to be playing all that much. The ‘catchy as a cold’ first single, Spotlight showcases how they really do operate as a band rather than simply overdubbing a bunch of instruments on top of each other. Speaking of overdubs, what would a normal band use to build into the first big chorus – power chords? String pads? On Goodbye and Odds MM use violin and marimba/glockenspiels!
Meany’s world-weary lyrics about “our sad terminal democracy” on the latter seem to refer to how the band scrapped all the songs they’d already written on the road for this album and started again from scratch.
“I know it’s hard to say We’ll throw it all away But the odds are we’ll be better off”
Standout ballad Lost Year could almost be a Swell Season piano track but for the odd chord clusters in chorus. No instrument ever seems to be played conventionally or predictably for very long. Darren King’s drumming, often chopped up, distorted and compressed, is transformed on Pins & Needles into a gentle Jazz-like support for more string quartet oddness.
Closing track Burden opens like a driving INXS song but in the final few minutes becomes a plaintive and almost ambient meditation on the futility and fragility of the fallen condition. Built musically on the bridge of Spotlight, it’s a masterful Ecclesiastes like summation of the album’s theme.
“The devil is not the nature that is around us, But the nature that is within us all”
This album is a grower, full of surprise and depth on every level. You can buy Armistice here.
What U2 are to the modern worship movement Mutemath could be to postmodern indie rock worship. Channelling it, perfectly expressing it, transcending it, and ultimately defining it. The band that every other band sounds a little bit like. The most influential band in the genre without actually being in the genre. Maybe.
I'm not saying they particularly SOUND like U2. Mutemath don’t really sound like any one of their closest ‘competitors’. For one thing there’s a organic feel that earths even their most programmed moments, giving them a humanity that David Crower Band’s relentless barrage of bleeps (AKA ‘Church Music’) never gets close to.
For another the funky atmosphere of the band's native New Orleans is a missing ingredient in most bands but simmers away in the background here like a spicy pan of gumbo. The spirits of George Porter Jr. & Zigaboo Modeliste hover around title track Armistice like funky guardian angels. (In fact the only disappointment with the album is that the barebones remix of Armistice showcasing the Rebirth Brass Band isn’t here - but you can listen to it here or on Under The Radar's podcast).
Album opener Nerve has singer Paul Meany’s most Bono-like lyrics
“This world’s like a wounded martyr worried if his commitment is gone”
but where U2 want to save the world MM just want to “set it on fire.”
Backfire kicks off with a beguiling constantly detuning guitar. Guitarist Greg Hill may be from the Edge school of minimalism but he paints his own pictures with his own colours.
Presumably taking it’s name from the uber-distorted bass intro Clipping is overlaid with skittering drums and classical piano arpeggios. In place of a guitar solo we get a string quartet swooping and screeching and capturing the song’s desperation and confusion perfectly.
Here's a great song and video from Mute Math. The song appears in the Mormon Teenage Vampire Flick 'Twilight' (but we'll forgive them for that). The video was shot in one take at 60% slower speed. Very creative. (Look out for the singer running to get back in the van!)
.
or