I’ve gotta start this post out by saying that my buddy Patrick generally makes excellent music recommendations. He’s helped me enjoy hip-hop, and introduced me to Sufjan Stevens.
But yesterday, one of his recommendations went awry. And that would be The David Crowder Band’s “A Collision.”
I popped this CD into my car’s player yesterday after lunch, and immediately started vascilating between bored and dissappointed. Don’t get me wrong - this guy isn’t horrible. It’s just that he’s merely passable. The music is that sort of generic, over-produced sounding “Praise Music” format that I think has helped terminally injure the Christian music scene. You know (or perhaps you don’t) - airy and warbly vocals, lots of filler sound to make the track sound full and almost intricate, masking the simple and trite chord progression designed to allow countless youth and college groups play the song before their next meeting.
I suppose therein lies the tiny merit of such music, but I think I’d prefer to hear these songs in that context - raw, acoustic, and accompanied by a chorus of young adult voices that are singing to glorify God. I don’t presuppose that Crowder isn’t singing to glorify God, but the music just doesn’t seem to stand out more than the pop dross that so assaults our ears on a top 40 station, so it’s difficult for me to get into it.
There is, interestingly enough (and Patrick didn’t know about this until yesterday), a cover of a Sufjan Stevens song on this album - Oh God, Where are You Now? from his Michigan CD. It’s alright, but is shorter and more mellodramatic than the original - and no, it’s not simply because I’m a rabid Sufjan fan - I just don’t like Crowder’s style on the cover.
Well that’s really all I have to say on the subject, though perhaps in the near future I’ll write a long entry (or better yet, a series!) on my feelings about musical worship and the deficiencies of the Christian music industry.
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