I don't know about you, but one thing that really drives me nuts as someone who prides himself on his ability to pay close attention to music is when I hear what seems to be a really solid rock album that I just listen to endless for days, and then I get all psyched to write a glowing review of it, only to find upon closer examination of the lyrics that all of that rocking goodness is really just there to mask lazy songwriting. It's part of the dichotomy between being a music fan and a music critic - what's pleasing to the ear isn't always pleasing to the brain. And what looks solid from far away can have a lot of holes in it when examined up close. It's frustrating to find that out. It takes the wind out of my sails and makes me feel confused about how to rate things.

Fortunately, I'm not here to make that complaint about Wavorly. I thought that I might at first - I've been listening to their debut album Conquering the Fear of Flight for quite some time, and I was a bit confounded because I felt like it was a good example of a solid modern rock album with a creative musical approach, bringing in classical string interludes to offset the rhythm guitar-heavy song structures or even cooperate side-by-side with the more conventional rock instrumentation. But for a while there, I had a really difficult time telling a lot of the songs apart, and unfortunately, that gave me a negative view of what this band had to say. Then I set out to actually review there record, and gave the lyrics a much closer look, and what do you know? As it turns out, these guys are a lot more literate than I gave them credit for. It's the type of pleasant surprise that I rarely receive, because usually, when a rock band (especially one signed to a Christian record label) gets all revved up to the point when the words or their meaning get lost in the ensuing melee, it's a hint that the lyrics are a bit of a secondary focus for the group. A lot of the more artistic, intelligent lyrics that I've heard on rock records recently come from the more downbeat, experimental, "indie" types, so color me surprised that this band can deftly mix heavy guitars, strings, piano, shifting time signatures, and a strong pop sensibility while paraphrasing the works of C. S. Lewis, or constructing an allegorical fantasy tale, or offering a soul-baring confessional that shows what it really means to wrestle with God. These are smart guys.

But my earlier reaction still stands, and it's one of the reasons that I had to take one star away from an otherwise perfect rating for Wavorly's debut - it can be a bit too easy to get lost in the riffage and forget which song is which. I wouldn't say that this is "hard" rock music, but it is quite energetic and dramatic. I'd cite Mae and House of Heroes as musical touchstones. The band members themselves have cited influences as diverse as Relient K, Muse, Anberlin, Taking Back Sunday, and Anathallo (seriously? Wow.) Christianity Today, oddly enough, compared them to The Killers, Panic! At the Disco, and Fall Out Boy. (Oh, well, you can't win 'em all.) Basically, it's sort of a post-punk approach that puts an emphasis on composition, occasionally at the expense of catchiness or ease of deciphering the lyrics, but that usually follows in due time once you get used to the twists and turns. They're not the type of band who will dutifully scale the guitars and drums back just to make the lyrics more audible, and on the one hand I respect the willingness to not always adhere to structure, but on the other hand, this is why it took me so long to notice some of the lyrics.

What's most unfortunate (and it's the other reason I had to take away that star) is that on one of the project's few ballads, the band's most noticeable lyrics are front and center, and it's an almost completely by-the-numbers praise & worship anthem that caters so blatantly to lowest-common-denominator Christian radio sensibilities that I can barely stomach it. I'll get to that one in due time, but suffice to say, this band has too much going on upstairs to really need to rely on such drastic pandering. Aside from that shockingly out-of-place runt of a song, though, it's quite a soaring flight... so strap in, hang on, and try to pay attention!

Introducing
First off, we have a beautiful prelude of strings and piano that gives us absolutely no warning for what is to come, unless the sound begins to warp and the colors smear across the screen, and...

Madmen
This is the real adventure
To move past what's mediocre
Obsessed with entertainment
Step up or miss the point of it...
SLAM! BANG! And ACTION!!! The band drops a doozy of a rocker on us, with slicing, angular guitar riffs, pounding drums, and tense, dramatic strings, all flying by at a fast enough speed to make the song feel like a life-or-death proposition. Lead singer Dave Stovall comes out strong, his voice crying out against a complacent culture that's replaced the desire to grow and change and learn with a lot of mindless entertainment just to make us comfortable. "We say that we're the future", he notes gruffly in the chorus, "Only want it if it goes our way!" The song is clearly meant to throw a proverbial hand grenade into a room full of procrastinators, and it accomplishes its goal with astounding urgency.

Part One
Now we leave this place
Between the light and the dark, there's a comfortable grey
From all I've known, I'll have to part ways
I won't go through this, the divorce is too great...
While we've heard plenty of arena-sized rock songs with strings doing their duty in the background, I must say that I've heard few good examples of really making them a key player instead of just a background element to bolster the guitars and vocal melodies. Here, there's a beautiful symmetry between the mad, swooping guitar licks at the beginning of the song, and the maelstrom of strings repeating that same vicious melody as the song comes slamming to a close. Sandwiched in between are plenty of tasty ingredients - a catchy chorus featuring a bit of vocal ping-pong between Dave and the other guys in the band, a brief bit of ticked-off guitar shredding during the bridge, a brief respite where all of the instruments fall away except for a few tense strokes from the string section, and some heady lyrics all throughout that seem to reference C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. It's a song about trying to live one's life in the grey area and finding out the had way that a man cannot serve two masters. Clever stuff - thoughtfully worded and skillfully played.

Stay with Me
In slowing down the words that steer the argument
We find that neither side meant any word of it...
An electronically distorted guitar intro brings us into more of a mid-tempo rocker that I kind of dismissed at first due to a weak chorus hook (the "whoa"s from the background vocalists remind me too much of "Madmen", except they seem a bit flimsy here) and what sounded like a generic lyric. Looking more deeply at it, I realize that it's a song about a fight, a conflict between friends that has come to a head, and one person is trying to smooth it over by asking if the issue is really more important than the friendship. Good use of the piano and strings here to fill in the gaps between the more aggressive parts, but overall, the song still doesn't have enough "oomph" to be a true standout.

Praise and Adore (Some Live Without It)
Wake up morning sunrise in my eyes
At night the moon lights all the sky
Still some say You didn't do a thing...
Here's the real shock to the system, the bit of pandering that should really be beneath a band of this calendar. The abrupt transition from the riff-heavy obstacle course of the last three songs to the humdrum acoustic strung and slow, breezy melody that immediately leads this one off makes it feel like you've flipped to a completely different band. And while Wavorly proves to do ballads well later in the record, here they totally suck at it, due to a tendency to oversimplify and settle for run-of-the-mill CCM couplets like, "So I praise and adore You, lay it all down before You". The song wants to be something more intelligent than it is - it wants to ponder creation and make the case that this couldn't all exist by chance, without the hand of a Creator at work. But it commit's the usual faux pas of CCM songs that try to fend off the skeptics by basically saying, "It’s true because I believe it's true, so there." I know you can't prove the existence of God in a three-minute song, but sheesh, at least cite some of the internal reasoning that you went through in order to arrive at your conclusion that it was worth having faith in something that science can't prove or disprove. Don't waste those precious minutes with Christian magnetic poetry, adult contemporary fake rock that uses guitars, rums, and bass to make dull mush, and thoroughly uninteresting "weepy strings" when we know you're full well capable of using all of those elements to generate much more interesting results. Don't give your label an excuse to punt with the choice for a lead single when they could have been forced to pick something a little meatier. I'm almost tempted to blame co-writer Trevor McNevan (of the obnoxious Christian Limp Bizkit ripoff band Thousand Foot Krutch) for this one, but the lyrics aren't nearly obnoxious enough, so it can't be solely his fault. I just don't know what Wavorly was thinking with this one.

Endless Day
For what it's worth, in a space so different
The gray of home could never compare
Undeserving rescue offers me escape from despair...
The band quickly earns back my trust as this next song takes off running, getting back to hinting at that "Great Divorce" theme again with a poetic song that you won't realize is poetic due to how quickly the lyrics fly by (the other guys shout a few of them in the background, and I really enjoy the vocal interplay as a subtle ingredient in many of these guys' songs). This one seems to describe the moment where light tips the balance and wins out over dark - where the soul, still in its mortal phase, experiences the beginning of its eternal life. The confidence in this song works really well, because guitarist Seth Farmer knows how to put all of the right exclamation points on it.

Sleeper
When I'm left alone, down at the heart of it
My doubt was never a sign of strength
I wish I'd known that You were never far
I guess I would've known if I would've been awake...
I suppose I have to apologize to Trevor McNevan for that little diss earlier (still hate your band, though!), because along comes the next pseudo-ballad on the record, which he helped to write, and it's actually a pretty good one. (Now that I double-check the credits, it turns out he also had a hand in writing "Part One". So I feel stupid.) Those who have listened to a decent amount of Christian music will recognize where they're going with the "sleeper" metaphor almost instantly, but I think its use here is effective as a counterpoint to some of the silly, dreamy metaphors that have been used to describe the Christian life in other people's songs. Here, it's life before Christ that gets described as the dream - not a particularly good one, just sort of a confused stupor, and the person is finally coming out of their coma and experiencing reality. That's the point of view expressed here, amidst dramatically intertwined strings, guitar, and a buoyant dose of Ryan Coon's piano. It's hard to have a piano in a rock band without the heavier sound drowning it out and without the piano taking over and turning them into one of those Coldplay clones, so they get extra credit for falling prey to neither.

A Summer's Song
Now years down the road, still hasn't gotten old
To sit and laugh the day away
There's one thing you should know, my love for you grows
Even more every day...
Alright, here comes the mushy part. Is it bad if the cheesy love song is my favorite track on the album? There's just something about the way that the finger-picked acoustic guitar, the softly brushed drums, and the melancholy strings seem to clear the air and make it possible to see that midsummer night's dream of lying on a blanket with the one you love and gazing up at the stars really taking place. It's a song that expresses gratitude for the years already spent with this person, and also unbridled anticipation for what's to come - one gets the impression that it's about a couple who is waiting for the right time to tie the knot, and it seems so far away, and yet there's this sense that their time together hasn't even come close to growing old, so the waiting will only make the bond stronger. Maybe it was just the timing, since I first heard it in the days leading up to celebrating two years of marriage to my lovely wife. Maybe I'm just a sap. Either way, sweet song.

Time I Understood
As I'm building up this house, I wonder what of it will stay
It seems You just take things away
And I'll admit, I shouldn't say these things
But I have got to hear from You somehow...
Back to the grind! And I don't mean that in a boring way; I mean that this song literally grinds and stutters along, once again putting an effective exclamation point on the emotions that Dave is feeling. This time, though, the results aren't nearly as confident - the guy's downright frustrated, wrestling with God over that old adage "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away". Someone or something's been taken away, and he's kind of throwing a temper tantrum over it, not getting why God allowed the house he built on the sand to topple over. It's actually easy to miss the process he goes through amidst the riffage and the sometimes overlapping vocals - they probably could have cleaned up the presentation of this one just a bit to make sure that the words hit their intended mark. Still, it's a fine case of a song that reveals some genuine thought when examined more closely - lots of Christian bands know how to write songs about God making good results out of the bad things that happen to the people who trust Him. But not many will own up to actually being mad at God for taking something away, shaking that fist at the sky, and actually learning a bit of humility and maturity in the process, coming out better off because of the thing that was taken away.

After this, there's a brief contemplative string interlude, which seems a bit out of place between two of the moodier songs on the record, but it works as a sort of intermission.

Forgive and Forget
It's making sense, the telltale signs
The root of it, the taste so bitter
The source of pain, the jealous grudge
That you allowed in anger...
This might be the album's most aggressive song, not so much in terms of tempo, but definitely in terms of guitar distortion and floor-shaking low-end. There's a bit of business with the double bass drum going on here that makes me impressed at drummer Jamie Hays's versatility. It's another "conflict song", not nearly as optimistic as "Stay with Me", but more a case of a guy getting a taste of his own medicine, as he realizes how deeply he regrets refusing to forgive someone who apparently really ticked him off. The seething anger just haunts him as he admits to God, "How could I choose not to forgive, with everything You choose to forget?" I could see 12 Stones writing a song like this, actually, but it wouldn't have the cool strings or the totally unexpected dance breakdown slammed right into the middle of all the heaviness. These guys are pretty slick, I'll tell you what.

How Have We Come This Far
Hands that are reaching
To a world that's turned away from You
Truth that is sobering
Your love will never cease finding the lost ones...
Holy whiplash, Batman! I'm not sure if it was quite the right time for a reflective piano waltz, but once again, when the songwriting's good, I find that I'm OK with this band going soft. This is definitely a song that expresses regret and a point of turning around, and it almost gives the little interlude preceding "Forgive and Forget" a little context, as if the calmer moments were meant to bookend that weighty song. This one is basically a prayer, an admission to God that one has messed up in so many ways, and is quite astonished that God could not only love them despite that, but also actually use those scars as opportunities to mature them quite a bit, to the point where they can look back and feel like they used to be a totally different person.

Twenty Twenty
Your time, though no signs seem congruent
You'll find the design plays into it
Time to let this go, you never had control...
Now we're getting revved up again for the finale. This song is also about hindsight (which should be obvious from the title), but it's expressed in more of an upbeat rock song, with sort of a syncopated delivery that makes the syllables and rhymes sound ultra-catchy even though the actual words will probably slip by you once again. I know because it's happened to me - I can't sing along to the chorus correctly without saving my life, because it's a bit of a mouthful. Not that I'm complaining - I'll trade simple repetition for something a little meatier any day - but it might be another case where the composition of the song pushes the song's ability to communicate a message slightly into the background. What I gather of it from looking at the lyrics is that it's a song about the battle between control and surrender, a sort of plea from the person in the previous who can look back and see how surrendering to God has been beneficial in their lives, to a person who is still doing a lot of arm-wrestling with God, and losing, and getting frustrated over it. A few of these songs seem to mean more when you connect them with their surroundings.

One more string interlude follows at the end of this track, this time a much more whimsical one with crashing cymbals and vague crowd noise and the overall feeling of a three-ring circus gone mentally insane. Just like "Introducing" into "Madmen", this also melts away into the sudden slam of the powerhouse rocker that follows it.

Tale of the Dragon's Defeat
Your words may have swayed her before
But I'll fight to help her ignore
Every word that you say
That masks your intent to betray...
This final song is a bit of a gravity-defying feat on the band's part, taking the taunting melody from the string interlude and bending and shifting it to fit the ever-changing rhythms that can make their performance a bit hard to follow, but at the same time a whole lot of fun. They go into high allegory mode here, with temptation set up as a "dragon" character which Dave is compelled to defeat in order to save an innocent victim who isn't aware of the tricks and lies that have lured her into this dragon's lair. It's pretty astounding stuff from a compositional perspective - it might lose a bit of traction on some of those hairpins turns when they change up the time signature, but I'm impressed that the band can hold it together through the entire obstacle course, and I love that, despite showing themselves capable of writing a ballad that can tug the old heartstrings, they decided to go the opposite way and close the record with such a dizzying rocker. The fury of the guitars and the strings seem to depict the grand aerial battle going on, with both ending up in a grand tailspin in a manner of seconds, and then, sudden silence.

The Defeat
And then, as a coda, comes Ryan Coon's solemn piano, reflecting on that same melody once again, as if to give us a slow-motion, black-and-white musical image of the dragon slowly dropping out of the sky, as our hero lands the final blow and the lights slowly fade. And thus, the skies are no longer being terrorized, and the fear of flight has been conquered.

Phew - this has been a tricky record to describe, but now that I've managed to take my best shot at it, I'm hoping it's an intriguing enough description to make you want to hear the album for yourself. Once you untangle the meaning of the story from the looming walls of thick instrumentation, it can be quite an enjoyable ride - it just takes a little hanging in there to really appreciate this overlooked gem from the summer of 2007.

ALBUM WORTH:
Introducing $.50
Madmen $2
Part One $2
Stay with Me $1
Praise and Adore (Some Live Without It) -$.50
Endless Day $1.50
Sleeper $1
A Summer's Song $2
Time I Understood $1.50
Forgive and Forget $1.50
How Have We Come This Far $1
Twenty Twenty $1
Tale of the Dragon's Defeat $1.50
The Defeat $.50
TOTAL: $16.50

Band Members:
Dave Stovall: Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitar
Seth Farmer: Vocals, Lead Guitar
Matt Lott: Bass
Ryan Coon: Piano, keyboards
Jaime Hays: Drums

Websites:
http://www.wavorly.com
http://www.myspace.com/wavorly

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening