I read a great article today on pitchforkmedia.com about religion and its place in today's music scene, more specifically, the indie rock scene. I arrived at this article kind of through the back door, Derek told me about hypem.com, from there I was turned onto a great music blog, iguessimfloating.com. While looking through their picks of best albums of 2006, their number thirteen pick caught my eye. Cold War Kids. I had never heard of these guys before, and in iGIF's little write up they mentioned Marc Hogan of pitchfork. So like the little Internet reference finder I am, I went to pitchfork and searched for their review of the album. Once that was found, within the first line of the review, the link to the article was given. Finally.
Now instead of rehashing what the author of this column has already said, because I agree with most parts, I am just going to offer up my thoughts and response to it. (you can read it here for yourself) I think this article is written from a unique perspective because most of the time when I read anything on this topic it is written by a Christian. Now I have no clue if Chris Dahlen is a Christian (I hope he is) but when I was reading it I was under the assumption that he is not, and coming from pitchfork I knew it would have a unique angle. Like stated in the column, most of today's indie scene seems to write of any music with religious overtones immediately, overlooking the emotional and heartfelt words of the singer/band. He references Sufjan Stevens as the turning point,or maybe just as an example where the opposite took place and everybody listened, everybody. Stevens not only gained the respect of indie critics, but the Christian music scene took notice and was quick to pick him to be on their side as if for a dodge ball game, proclaiming "look who we got!" Once this happened it can only be downhill and many artists have been put in this same situation and had their careers seriously damaged from being branded. Fortunately for us, Sufjan's fate was different. He has found a way to walk the tight rope between both sides, and has had huge success. Imagine if his music would have been buried with all the other stale Christian music that gets released just for the fact that it's labeled "Christian"? A real loss.
But the main thing that stayed with me from this column and what he does a great job of bringing light to, is that when religion is overlooked in the music we listen to, we are a lot of times overlooking the best part of that music.
"You can disagree with church of your choice, but to dismiss religion altogether - and to write off the best ideas, the best people and of course the best indie rockers - that come out of it, seems pointless. Why shoot the messenger just because you're scared he has a message?"
Awesome. I would love to see more music journalists thinking like this - bravo. Even though this article was written back in January of 2006, reading it brought me hope of more music being noticed that carries a Christian/religious message instead of getting shuffled to the back with the rest of the religious music that gets ignored. There is much more to this excellent article than I am highlighting here, but these are the thoughts that immediately sprang to my head. I love reading about this topic, music and religion have always had such an explosive relationship, sometimes good, sometimes bad. but always interesting and worth investigating.
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