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Label: lowercase people records / Credential Recordings
Sound/Style: Melancholy alternative folk with searching, personal lyrics
By Steve Morley
As the lead singer and primary songwriter of rock band Switchfoot, Jon Foreman has carefully sidestepped the star mentality to thoughtfully explore brokenness and earthly life through the lens of faith. His facility with his subject matter has given Switchfoot the rare ability to straddle both Christian and secular audiences. Not surprisingly, he’s found a novel way to present his solo debut—as a quartet of stripped-down mini-albums based on the four seasons. The first double-disc release, Fall and Winter, taps into the somber symbolism of the colder months to survey a landscape of dark feelings.
Foreman’s approach involved more than simply unplugging his guitar. His intimate, late-night recordings were laid down in a skeletal form intended to capture the songs’ emotional essence. Later, they were colored with artfully chosen instrumentation, creating subtleties that easily justify the decision to forego rock dynamics. The effectively spare and often haunting tracks, sung in a plaintive voice, powerfully evoke Foreman’s familiar world-weariness and ardent spiritual search, ravaged by the expressed knowledge of the decrepit inner state he shares with all humankind. (“We’re all murderers and thieves/ Setting traps here for even our brothers/ And both of our hands are equally skilled at doing evil/ Equally skilled at bribing the judges/ Equally skilled at perverting justice…”)
Fall and Winter ’s first disc is divided between spiritual and relational themes, the link being the failure of both the self and significant others to meet our deepest needs. He takes aim at the hazards of romantic love on “The Moon Is a Magnet,” wrapping a skeptical lyric in a fractured samba that, while uncommonly playful, sends a telling message about the fickleness of the human heart: “A kiss is contagious/ It will betray us all/ A kiss will betray us all.”
Foreman offers glimpses of relief in his direct references to a loving God, but the prognosis is not wholly uplifting on “The Cure for Pain,” which suggests that suffering must be embraced in order to come closer to the Comforter. (“Heaven knows, heaven knows/ I tried to find a cure for the pain/ Oh, my Lord, to suffer like you do/ It would be a lie to run away.”)
The wintry theme of death appears in the oddly encouraging “Learning How to Die,” but it’s the fear lurking behind mortality and loneliness that Foreman primarily tackles on the second disc. In “Behind Your Eyes,” he pleads with a companion to look behind her facade of emotional safety in hopes of making a meaningful connection—a quest he admits is frightening. “Somebody’s Baby” peers poignantly inside a homeless addict’s thoughts, which include the devastating line, “when people don’t want you, they just throw you money for beer.”
By humanizing a character that society views largely as debris, Foreman opens a window into our shared fragility and the unwelcome shock of seeing it reflected in another face. Foreman’s compassion for the sinner comes through more readily in this story song than in the sober self-examinations that dominate the collection.
Fall and Winter makes for a somewhat frosty listen, and yet Foreman’s transparent self-disclosure and ultimately redemptive message offset the chill, reminding us that even in the season of death and decay the promise of new life awaits.
Audio Clips
"The Cure for Pain"
"Southbound Train"
"Learning How to Die"
"Behind Your Eyes"
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