A few months ago, I was privileged to be invited to a friend's birthday, it was a huge event with great people, food and music. One particular artist that played was a friend of mine, who has a mutual interest in songwriting and recording his original material. He was keen to pull me aside and play me some of his latest songs.After having played a few of his songs to me in a quiet spare room of the host's house, he began to explain some of the spiritual aspects of his songs. He began by explaining to me that he often felt threatened to expose real meaning of his songs for fear of ridicule, and felt that he had to be somewhat cryptic in his lyrics to hide their true message.
He continued to explain how his belief had changed his life dramatically and how he felt so strongly about this truth he had discovered, yet felt uncomfortable in openly displaying in his songs. Whilst feeling somewhat empathetic to his situation, I also felt somewhat the opposite as often I would try and delve deep into my musical innards to express my beliefs yet all that would come out was dark brooding music.
The reason I mention this at this stage is that I have just had a listen to the new Mountain Goats release "The Life Of The World To Come" which is a collection of songs based on biblical verses. There is no hiding this fact, as each song is titled after the verse which it is inspired by.
Though the Mountain Goats are not a Christian band and have never presented themselves as such in their earlier 13 or so recordings, they have obviously taken a risk with their fan base to release a collection of songs based on biblical verses, yet must have felt the impulse to do so openly and beautifully.
I have provided a download link for the album below which isn't something I normally do in this blog, so if you do download the album and like it , I'd encourage you to go out and buy it.
Cheers,
Ecca.
