Making 'Something Beautiful'

Critical Record Review – The Outsiders, by Needtobreathe.

I chose this album because I think it is a masterful work of popular music, from the soul-searching lyrics to the almost omnipresent piano chords gently guiding the choruses. Also, it has helped me get through every late night paper writing session for the past two years – it’s mellow enough to softly compliment my studying, but inspirational enough to help me push through the last three pages even after 2 a.m.

Produced by John Alagia, who is best known for his work with Dave Mathews Band and John Maher, two folk-pop artists with a feel that sometimes parallels Needtobreathe, this album is the third from the four-man folk-rock band.

To be clear, the classification of Needtobreathe as folk-rock is my own. Typically the band is identified as an alternative rock or Christian rock group, although their lyrics are not explicitly or exclusively Christian. I plan to make an argument for why the group fits my understanding of the folk-rock genre better than any other.

When I say folk, I’m referring to modern or contemporary folk, which relies heavily on assemblage, which creates something new out of old cultural artifacts and practices. Needtobreathe’s overall sound is heavily influenced by their acoustic work with instruments typical of old-time music – the guitar, mandolin and banjo. 

(Trust me, I’ve been to Galax, the country’s largest old-time fiddle convention – the only way to get a banjo out of an old-time music lover is to pry it from his cold, dead hands.) Needtobreathe’s emphasis on vocal harmonies unites them with other artists in vogue right now (look at how quickly Mumford and Sons, another folk-rock band, shot to star status). As far as the band’s particular version of the folk aesthetic goes, they’ve got a strong beat driving the tone of each song with a rocking rhythm. Even the slower, easier listening songs are grounded by a steady, lullaby-type beat.

Needtobreathe easily fits the rock description as well, with their electric guitar and synthesizer accenting many of their songs, especially at the bridge, when the tension has built to the breaking point. Their use of piano, which is near and dear to my heart as the only instrument I’m proficient in playing, also puts them solidly within rock’s genre. But you can’t deny their reliance on folk heritage, which is why I classify them as folk-rock.

For a little bit of context, you should know that brothers Bo and Bear Rinehart, two of the group’s members, are “pastor’s sons who hail from the rural South Carolina town of Possum Kingdom,” according to the band biography on needtobreathe.net. Seth Bolt and Joe Stilwell round out the quartet.

On the surface, I am interested in how inspirational and thoughtful the lyrics are because they resonate with my beliefs, but they also have a wide appeal because they speak about the great themes in life that we all are interested in, regardless of religious beliefs (finding purpose, joy in trial, finding love, finding one’s place in the world).

But what I love about this album is how it shows the depth of the folk-rock genre far beyond that which artists like John Mayer and Dave Matthews Band have tapped. Folk is usually rich lyrically –  featuring poetry layered with meaning intrinsic to the singer’s beliefs, and the Needtobreathe boys have created works of art with their lyrics that resonate with anyone facing challenges or looking for something more in life. Which is everyone, right? Except maybe Paris Hilton.

Needtobreathe appeals to multiple audiences, but especially to college kids, because we’re at that crossroads in life where the themes I mentioned above are so poignant, but people at all stages of life can still appreciate those themes.

The larger audience Needtobreathe serves is the youth culture. Needtobreathe isn’t yet mainstream, so they have to reach out to the audiences who will reach back, that is the ones who do their own digging to find great music, rather than passively letting DJs feed it to them. Because of that special relationship, the artists can stay more true to their original desire, rather than letting a producer take their music on a different path than they had in mind.

The band’s authenticity comes through in the earnest vocals and honest lyrics. On their website, the band talks about their intentions for their music:

“We wanted to make an important record in the way that people used to make records. Bands rarely have the time that allows them to create a game-changing album like Born to Run, Rumours, or Damn The Torpedoes. So we said, ‘Let's set ourselves up to do that. Let's believe in the songs enough that we're willing to take the time they need and really push ourselves. It may sound naïve, but we still have a dream that we're going to make a record that's going to change everything for us.”

Although they were speaking specifically about their fourth album The Reckoning, released just last week, I think they had the same mindset when creating The Outsiders. And the wonderful thing is, while believing in their songs and staying true to themselves, they still produced a product with wide ‘of-the-people’ pop appeal. According to the website, The Outsiders hit No. 9 on Billboard’s Rock Albums chart, and held down a top 20 spot on the Top 200.

Well done boys, well done.

I Can't Live...

Live music review:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZtsEY7AVMg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McwdN9E86So&feature=fvst

I’m going to review U2’s With or Without You as performed during the 360 Tour. I’ve chosen two videos of the song, the first as they performed it at the Rose Bowl and the second at a stadium in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The Rose Bowl video is professionally done and uses the audio feed from the mics, while the Sao Paolo one is filmed by a member of the audience in the nosebleed section.

I’ve chosen this song because I was at the U2 concert in Raleigh and had the time of my life. I was seated in the lower section of the stadium and sat enthralled the entire time. It was the first concert I’d ever been to, and it blew my mind.

A lot of my friends from UNC went as well and really enjoyed it, but I have heard some critics claim that it was too much. I want to use these two videos to explore that idea because I think it brings up a lot of questions about Bono’s style and ability as a performer to keep multiple generations entertained.

The first thing you should know is that this is the song the band closed out almost every show with on this tour. It was their final encore at Carter-Finley and it was the same in Sao Paolo and in Pasadena. In my experience, you can always expect something a little different in an encore.

Aside from the complaint that the huge stage, the screens and the hoopla surrounding the show were just too much, I’ve also heard people complain how Bono intentionally changes or ‘messes up’ the vocal timing on this song whenever he performs it.

I think the Rose Bowl video illustrates just how Bono intended the performance to be received. The giant screens allowed for close-up shots of all the band members even from the nosebleed section, so in many ways you did feel a sense of intimacy, which is what the Rose Bowl performance is all about. It’s true Bono does change the vocal timing -- he makes you hang on every word by missing the beat he’s supposed to come in on just slightly ever time. And before I’d ever been to a concert, whenever I heard recordings of live performances, I would get annoyed. “They always mess up the songs -- it’s stupid!” I would say. But seeing U2 live changed my view on that.

While I still am not a huge fan of listening to concert recordings, what I realized at this show was that if he didn’t change it up, you would get bored and feel like you were just listening to the original record. What Bono managed to do with this and many other songs in the show was keep everyone’s rapt attention, simply with his voice, and mesmerize them with the unbelievable set.

The Sao Paolo video gives a much better idea of the scale of these performances, which brings me to the issue of whether or not Bono tried to do too much. Did the band overestimate the size of their own personalities? Was a huge set required just to fill their egos? I’ve heard people say Bono is just too full of himself. But I totally disagree.

One of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen was when Bono told everyone to hold up their cell phones and turned Carter-Finley into a miniature galaxy. The giant disco ball that you can see reflecting off the entire stadium in this video comes in at a close second. And as I mentioned before, the giant 360 screen gave you a sense of intimacy that’s actually kind of hard to believe you could feel from so far away.

You can’t deny that Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. must all have a pretty high esteem of themselves in order to dream of a stage so huge and a set-up so self-glorifying, but I think it’s pretty fair to say they’ve earned it. They were a huge favorite of my parents’ generation and they’re still well-loved by my generation -- and that’s quite a feat considering how diametrically opposed those two groups of people are.

I think this performance accomplished everything Bono set out to accomplish with it -- he satisfied an audience of epic proportions screaming out for one more song, and he put a spin on it that kept everyone holding their breath, wondering what he would do next, all the while appearing approachable and accessible.

Nobody said it was easy

For my first attempt at cultural criticism, I’ve chosen Coldplay’s song The Scientist. This has always been one of my favorite Coldplay songs, but it took on a completely new meaning for me after I watched the video.

It’s not a wildly popular song and the video isn’t provocative or controversial like those of club favorites like Rihanna or Lady Gaga, but it is incredibly haunting. The first time I watched it, my heart stopped for the last 10 seconds when the meaning of the video became crushingly evident.

Spoiler alert: if you haven’t already seen the music video, please watch it now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqWLpTKBFcU&ob=av2n

On the surface, this classic is just another break-up song. We all know how those go – nostalgic, regretful, tugging unashamedly at our heartstrings to form a product we can identify with in good times and bad.

The beginning of the video is a little curious, starting out with the artist lying on a mattress, giving no clues as to the intent of the song. You realize within the first 10 seconds that the whole video is showing a sequence of events in reverse, but it’s playing tricks with your brain because lead singer Chris Martin is lip-synching the lyrics correctly, not backwards as it should be if this were truly a video on rewind.

The theme of taking a scene in life and rewinding it back also isn’t too revolutionary, so the viewer isn’t too surprised to see this video accompanying this song.

But when you see the girl’s body lying in the weeds, you’re sucked in – wild horses couldn’t drag your face away from your laptop screen until you’ve found out what happened to her. This isn’t a break-up song, this is a mourning song. Now the line “Tell me you love me/ come back and haunt me” makes so much more sense.

And when the girlfriend takes her seatbelt off (but the video shows her putting it on because it’s in reverse), I breathed an involuntary “oh wow,” realizing the point of the video.

Anyone grieving the loss of a loved one can draw a lot out of this song, but the audience is wider than that. After you’ve seen the dénouement of the video, the first half seems absurd. How could he just walk away from that tragedy? And why does he look happy (jumping over walls, looking like he’s out for a walk in the park…what?) That’s when I realized it’s a metaphor for anyone or who can trace his life back to a certain point – maybe it seemed insignificant at the time – that changed everything, possibly for the worse.

And that realization brings the whole video’s message into focus: it’s looking at your life in rewind, examining every tiny detail and looking at the results with the bigger perspective of the fact that life goes on. “Nobody said it was easy/ no one said it would be so hard.” This is true of everything in life: relationship ups and downs, jobs, illnesses, raising children.

If you look back at your life and you find that moment that changed everything for the worse (maybe you realize you did inadvertently cause someone’s death by rolling the window down and making them cold), the weight of the feeling, be it guilt or regret, can crush you. But what this video is really about is moving on. It’s an ode to the process of recovery and figuring out how to live with a memory so haunting that it should consume your every waking thought. But if it did, then you might as well have died with her.

After the initial anger, guilt, regret and sense of loss have faded, there is peace.