Switchfoot, "Oh! Gravity" (Columbia Records, out Dec. 26)

On its sixth studio album and third for a major label, the San Diego five-piece isn't your pastor's typical Christian-rock band. Led by the brothers Foreman, Jon and Tim, these pop-rockers are rocking hard with conviction.

They still display a spiritual bent, but they do it without being heavy-handed or stuffing it down your throat ("Awakening," about being born again, and the excellent "Faust, Midas and Myself," where finding yourself is the best defense against temptation). Temptation and obsession are recurring themes, as on "4:12," which tackles material world obsessives with double-time hand claps (yeah!), and "American Dream," with the lyric "When success is equated with excess/the ambition for excess wrecks us. . . . This isn't my American dream"; but by the end of the song, the protagonist has changed his tune.

Jon Foreman has become a formidable songwriter and lyricist, as well, and his craft is on full display: musically on the raucous, up-tempo guitar rocker "Burn Out Bright" and the psychedelic "Dirty Second Hands," with its Led Zeppelin "Kashmir"-like Middle Eastern flavor. Lyrically, he's adept at turning a phrase, as on soulful R&B rocker "Amateur Lovers," where "We're not just amateur lovers. We're just amateur friends" is an excuse to do the deed again. And, on the pop-rock title track, he just wants some peace, love and understanding, as he pleads: "Sons of my enemies, why can't we keep it together?"

"Oh! Gravity" is a spiritual journey, but it's one more of realization than of testimony to the congregation and the newly converted.

I pick out lines that strike me most for the title of these posts: Jon Foreman has indeed become a formidable songwriter and lyricist. I think he's immensely grown with every album, as is the case with Switchfoot. This is why following a band like Switchfoot is such a pleasure--because they grow with every album, and surprise you, just when you think they couldn't have gotten any better. Coming back to Jon, in "Oh! Gravity." he seems to have focused a lot more on how the syllables in his poetry sound. Lines like "when success is equated with excess / the ambition for excess wrecks us" have a beautiful sound pattern going for it. So is the song "Oh! Gravity." - the sound patterns are brilliantly done, in that song. Major props, Mr. Foreman, you do seem to aiming at world domination. ;P

Labels: album reviews.