from Plugged in Music...

What Kind of 'Sound' Is Switchfoot Making?

Labels are tricky, especially with music. Though most artists want us to believe their music is unique, the recording industry relies on tags such as rock or hip-hop, Christian or secular, to market their material. After all, if we don't know what category something is in, how can we know if we'll like it?!



Which brings us to Switchfoot. The San Diego alt-rockers' (there's your first label) initial three albums enjoyed modest success on Charlie Peacock's re:Think imprint (which was part of EMI's Christian Music Group). Then, their presence on 2002's A Walk to Remember soundtrack marked the beginning of a transition from the CCM world to mainstream accessibility (labels two and three, respectively). That shift was completed when the band jumped to a "major label" (Columbia) for 2003's smash The Beautiful Letdown, which sold a massive 2.5 million copies. Switchfoot's latest, Nothing Is Sound, is now capitalizing on that momentum.



On the road to mainstream success, the band has taken pains to distance itself from its CCM roots. Members have consistently downplayed their "Christian band" label, declined interviews with Christian publications and prevented pictures from being taken at Creation Festival (a Christian event). Defending this trajectory, bassist Tim Foreman told an interviewer in 2003, "As a band, we're Christians by faith and not in genre, and I think people have a hard time differentiating between the two."



Modern-Day Proverbs
Switchfoot certainly has the right to position itself in the marketplace as it sees fit. But Christian fans also have the right to ask what, exactly, Tim Foreman's statement actually means. Is it just a lot of words justifying the band's jump into the secular arena? Or do Switchfoot's newest songs continue to find their lyrical footing in Christian ideas?



Maybe a bit of both is the most accurate answer.



Switchfoot's music is indeed infused with biblical imagery—but not in a way Christian fans might expect. Where many CCM artists speak lovingly about Jesus, Switchfoot takes a more circuitous route to expressing faith.



For example, "Happy Is a Yuppie Word" paraphrases Ecclesiastes: "Everything is meaningless/I want more than simple cash can buy." This lyric offers a representation of how the band uses biblical references. Instead of singing directly about Jesus or God, Switchfoot seems more interested in looking carefully at our culture, then using scriptural ideas to critique what they've observed. In this sense, their songs function as modern-day equivalents of the Bible's wisdom literature (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job).



Frontman Jon Foreman tries to explain it this way: "What is true happiness? Is it a comfortable four-door sedan with tinted windows? Does it mean I have 2.3 children and a beautiful wife and live in a great neighborhood? Everybody has their own version of what happiness means, but may of the things we're going for—and I include myself in this—are absurd. There's a moment in Jewish Scripture in Ecclesiastes where it says, 'Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.' That's the place where our new record starts."



His approach to lyrics is quite evident—if you know what you're looking for. The chorus in "Stars" echoes Psalm 8:3. And "The Shadow Proves the Sunshine" lifts a line from Psalm 22:1, asking, "Oh Lord, why did you forsake me?" More countercultural messages saturate "Easier Than Love" (which confronts casual sex) and "Lonely Nation" (which challenges our love affair with consumerism with the lines, "Just numb and amused. ... And we are slaves to what we want").



A Potentially Fatal Flaw
After pouring over this disc, I can find only one song that doesn't somehow follow this subtly instructive path. It's "The Fatal Wound," on which Foreman threatens, "I am the crisis/I am the bitter end/I'm gonna gun this town." Several songs have melancholy moments, but this one takes thing farther, seeming to suggest suicide and perhaps murder: "I am the razor edge/ ... Son of sorrow, staring down forever with an aching view/Disenchanted, let's go down together with the fatal wound/This is the real thing/no rubber bullets now/This is the final bow."



Unfortunately, not even Foreman's own comments about "Fatal Wound" shed any helpful light on the track's meaning. "This song was one of those tunes you just spit out and try to figure out what it means after you're through—a rather dangerous way to go but [a] very honest, almost free-association type of thing," he says, arguing that it is ultimately about hope and that it has something to do with Jesus: "It means a few things to me, but overall it's a song of hope. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone [a reference to 1 Peter 1:7]."



Where is the evidence of what Foreman calls hope? A redemptive lyrical turning point would counterbalance "Fatal Wound's" apparent intimations of violence to self and others. But I can't find it.



Lost in Translation?
As an English major in college years ago, I learned to look for biblical allusions in Shakespeare, Milton, Dante and others. Without an understanding of Scripture, it was impossible to make sense of those writers. Listening to Switchfoot's latest album felt like that to me. The band reflects Scripture without beating listeners over the head with God language. Thus, recognizing Switchfoot's spiritual themes requires careful observation and a knowledge of the Bible.



I applaud the band for this thoughtful approach to songwriting ("The Fatal Wound" excepted). Yet I also wonder how many of these submerged spiritual allusions will be missed by its new secular audience, which may know little about God's Word. As Switchfoot moves more deeply into the mainstream, I hope their scripturally inspired insights will get the attention of unbelieving listeners. But I fear their usually sound messages may be reduced to nothing of consequence as they get lost in translation.