I used to like the Newsboys. I still do, but I used to, too. *

Let me explain. The Newsboys are pretty much your quintessential Christian youth group favorite. They make fun, bouncy, poppy reflective music that pairs up well with slower, more reflective songs of soul-searching, and they do it with a lot of genuinely likeable personality and a slightly goofy stage presence. For a while, they seemed like an unstoppable force that had invaded the Northern Hemisphere from down under (the group is mostly Australian, with American members here and there and one New Zealander), putting out their most energetic and least synthesized (and in my opinion best) album in 1996 and then fumbling a bit after that with the departure of original lead singer John James. Actually, I still liked their material quite a bit despite the change-up and their weird experiment with the sounds of the 70's and all that (not a very youth groupy thing to do, but is worked in a "geeky anti-trend" sort of way), and felt like I was rediscovering an old favorite when they returned to form with 2002's Thrive. And then disaster struck.

Well, disaster's not exactly the right word, because what happened next temporarily did wonders for their career, but artistically speaking it was suicide. They mellowed and became a worship band for not one, but two full albums. Now I have nothing against worship music - I sing it every Sunday in church and I own some well-loved (and also some rather obscure) albums by Christian bands who seek to write genuine songs of praise in a unique and powerful fashion, and who generally pull it off. But when other bands who have shown a flair for being witty and goofy and inspiring a Christian audience toward deeper faith in their own quirky way suddenly decide that the "mature" thing to do is to mellow out and do simple praise chorus as if nothing else were as worthy of respect or radio play - I have major issues with that line of thinking. But that's what lead singer and occasional percussionist Peter Furler pretty much claimed - he was bored with rock music, and figured there was no higher purpose than to make worship songs. It seems he changed his tune when the follow-up Devotion didn't chart as high as the first attempt, Adoration. Or maybe he just lightened up a bit and realized that all music which reflects God's truth is worship music by definition. (Just not in the sense that you can sing along to it easily on Sundays.) Maybe "being bored with rock" was just a matter of personal preference, which I won't hold against him, but at the same time, we shouldn't confuse personal preference with a mandate from God. Anyway, that's all in the past these days, and now we have Go, the band's first rock album in four years.

Wait a minute! Go isn't a rock album. It's a return to some of the things that the Newsboys do best in many ways, but it's no Take Me to Your Leader. It's more of a happy medium between the sequenced alterna-pop of Step Up to the Microphone, the less disco-sounding (and more grown-up) mellow elements of Love Liberty Disco, the quirky 80's-style keyboard influences of Not Ashamed and their earlier material, and some Euro-dance influences that aren't exactly like what we've heard from the band before, but aren't coming totally out of nowhere, either. For the most part, these guys have always done power-packed dance pop songs that just so happen to have rocking guitar riffs here and there. Sequencing and all that is a major element of the band's work, and they integrate it with the big drums and guitars and bigger-than-a-nationwide-youth-conference choruses quite well. So even if Take Me to Your Leader, their only album done without all of the tracking and sequencing and all that, still stands as their critical high point, I don't expect them to try that one again and I won't criticize them for being so unashamed of their inherent poppiness.

I will criticize them, however, for falling back on some ridiculously elementary lyrics after all this time. On every Newsboys album, there's always been a few sentiments that were quite cleverly stated (sometimes even devastatingly so, on deeper tracks like "Elle G." or "Lost the Plot"), and then there were others which came off as either too trite or too blunt to fit in. I'm not saying that being explicitly Christian is bad - some of their best songs like "Shine" make no bones about the overall moral of the story, but they use fun and witty analogies and wordplay to get there. Songwriter, producer, and mentor Steve Taylor brought that element to the band for the most part, but they showed on Step Up to the Microphone that they could do some of that stuff without him. I complained about this on Thrive and I'll complain again here - when he's not sharing the songwriting duties on a particular track, the band is almost embarrassingly straightforward, and the two styles don't really juxtapose well. Ironically, two of the more "straightforward" tracks ended up standing out as my two favorites on this album, but that doesn't excuse the lack of inventiveness on several other songs. Go is a hit-and-miss affair, which has the potential to be the perfectly listenable pop/rock album that puts a huge smile on your face if you're not listening too closely, but which falls short of the band's long-forgotten standard set by their work in the mid-90's if you've got a more discerning ear.

Still, I can be grateful that this album's title doesn't end in -tion, and that it has a few tracks which do rank among the band's all-time best. Let's get into it, and I'll point the highlights out as we go.

Wherever We Go
Bullies make nice, crooks repent
And the ozone layer shows improvement
It's a curious thing, and it's humbling...
It's both a good thing and a bad thing that the Newsboys start their latest disc off with a little bit of good-natured wackiness. Remember "Shine" and all of the nonsensical changes that the love of God would purportedly inspire in people? There's a similar theme at work here, though this time it's more specifically about the love being spread by God's followers. The metaphor at work is that unexpected things will turn around with seemingly no explanation, and the 'boys can't pretend it's their own expertise - it's just God at work through them. Innocent enough, and some of the ways that they state this are amusing, but for the most part it's downright cheesy. A whole city full of people converting to Christianity probably isn't going to mend holes in the ozone layer, and it certainly won't stop bees from stinging people. By overstating the case in the hopes of getting a chuckle, they kind of killed the song. It's a blast to bounce and sing along to, though, with new guitarist Paul Colman delivering a jumpy staccato riff and drummer Duncan Phillips taking an unexpected approach that causes the chorus to roll more than it slams. I like that about the song - it tries something different than the obvious approach to delivering a solid hook, but it's still memorable and almost effortless to sing along to. It won't replace any of the classic must-haves at any Newsboys concert, but it's a decent shot at a new band-defining anthem, I guess.

Go
Everybody needs somebody for the long ride
Everybody needs somebody comin' alongside
Are you gonna lend a hand, or a fist?
The album's theme song (it kind of bugs me when the title of one song on an album is contained within the title of another song on the very same album, but I'll let that one, um, go) is a good barometer for whether you'll like this latest incarnation of the Newsboys as a whole - it's upbeat and catchy, but a lot more about percussion and groove than about guitar. Whatever role the guitar plays here, it's so processed that it blends in with the keyboard effects and other electronics. That doesn't prevent them from delivering another fun, slammin' track, but if you're looking to rock out, look elsewhere. Peter Furler's vocals are pretty munched up here, but they fit the techno-pop sound well, and Phil Joel (who will be missed; he left the band at the end of 2006) lays down a solid bass groove. This song's all about missions, about being willing to be sent out "To the top of the world, to the bottom rung, 'til the work is done." It's straightforward, but thankfully not too straight-faced to deliver one or two clever lines (I love the comparison between lending a hand and lending a fist, since the people we're being asked to go out to are often ones that we find reasons to despise or treat selfishly). What's weird about such synthesized, electronically-dependent tracks as these is that I have no doubt that the band will still pull them off with a lot of kickin' energy in concert. There's a solid enough percussion base that it never feels to artificial to be believable as the work of a band.

Something Beautiful
It's the child on her wedding day
It's the daddy that gives her away...
Now here's a song that I can't get enough of. It's about the most unabashedly un-trendy dance track on the whole project, and it's positively coated in Jeff Frankenstein's shimmering keyboard loops and the reliable thump-thump of a techno beat, but it's a song that lives up to its name, largely due to the joyous Euro-pop feel and the celebratory lyrics. No humor here, but none is needed to make a convincingly happy song - it's simply a tune which keenly observes some of the most beautiful moments in life and uses them as an analogy for the great love that God feels for us. It's not seminary dissertation material, but in this case it doesn't need to be - references to a father giving his daughter away at a wedding and a "kiss without any shame" are plainly understood but fully captivating without making the song too "girly" sounding to be effective. One line that comes later in the song says "When we laugh so hard we cry", which is probably my favorite moment, because it hints at our fleeting desire to hold onto such moments of beautiful spiritual clarity - it's so joyous that it's almost painful, because we know that life can't always be a string of such beautiful moments, but when we find them we never want them to end. A lean but effective guitar solo and some energetic pounding drum rolls near the end do their extra little parts to push this song over the boundary of true excellence. Not that many "happy" songs in the Newsboys canon bring out such deep emotions within me, so I have to give them an A+ here, even if they've written several other songs which express themselves with more lyrical depth.

The Mission
In the history of our faith's arrivals
Great awakenings, Welsh revivals
Saints and martyrs summoned by a new birth...
Keeping the tempo up after the preceding celebration of a song, this tune pretty much "takes off running" with the first verse coming in immediately, while Colman's guitars and Phillips' drums give it more of a rock-oriented, adrenaline rush-type sound. The drumming in particular reminds me of some of my favorite U2 songs from back in the 80's, though there's still the programmed, danceable feel that gives the song more of an early 90's flavor. This one gets a bit heady with its quick references to different scholars of the faith and their briefly summarized thoughts on evangelism - a reference to "The mission bell" in the chorus reminds me of Delirious?, though I tend to think that if Delirious? had written such a song, it would make a little less sense. (It would probably also be less focused on trying to cram theological factoids into such brief verses, so you can decide which band's approach would actually work better.) It's one of those songs where I get totally swept away in the flow of it when it's on, but I tend to forget later on that I considered it a standout. I'd be thrilled to hear it live, but wouldn't go home feeling ripped off if they left it out of their set. (Not that I'm planning to catch them on their Go Show tour anyway, given that the opening band is Kutless. Yikes.)

Let It All Come Out
How many fires, to make you feel pure again, alive again?
And what will it take, what has to break, for you to begin again?
Enter power ballad #1. It follows the tried-and-true template of starting small and intimate, trying to comfort a friend, and gradually opening the floodgates of emotion to give them some space to cry. Not terribly original or interesting, but I can't fault them for performing it with a good amount of gusto. Peter is speaking to someone who's been signed by cynicism, asking "Who's touched you, child?" and pleading with them not to let their wounds and their fears of people judging them to give them an excuse for living a life full of skeletons in the closet. Honesty is the best policy, and I like some of the phrasing as Peter tries to encourage her, particularly the line, "The devil came to steal your name away", which doesn't sound like a terribly positive thing to say when I quote it out of context like that, but since it falls during a calmer moment in the bridge, it seems to imply that the devil only has that power if this person can't be honest and realize that there's nothing to fear in confessing the same wrongs that are all to familiar to more of the rest of us than they realize. Secret sins do the most damage when you assume you're the odd man out and nobody else has the same problem. Peter goes for broke with one of his most impassioned vocal performances (that isn't done in falsetto like half the Love Liberty Disco album, anyway) near the end, and I love how the song shifts into a contemplative minor key bit instead of just ending on the traditional high note, with Peter softly promising "There's so much for you" as the light programming skips around and eventually fades out.

In Wonder
Such a wonder, ordering time and tide
Such a wonder, bridging the great divide
I consider all that You had, all You gave
And all that You endured from this rebel world...
Enter power ballad #2... and it's a worship song. A cover of a worship song, actually. I can hear the collective "Uh-oh" from everyone reading this who was positively bored with Adoration and Devotion, but fortunately I have nothing to complain about here - this is ironically one of the Newsboys' most convincing and enjoyable worship songs since... well, since the whole thing started for them with "It Is You". As simplistic as that song was, I enjoyed it because it was surrounded by other types of songs instead of being stuck on an album of dull, samey mid-tempo praise choruses, and I feel even more strongly about this one. New Zealand-based worship band Magnify first came up with this one, and the 'boys reportedly tweaked the lyrics a bit, so I can't say what it originally sounded like, but they've got a true winner here with a song that contemplates the vastness of God's creation and the wonder that God would even care for such small details as individual human beings who have all betrayed Him. Little things like the melody of Colman's lovely electric guitar intro, or the little "tumbling" riff provided by a string section (or, more likely, a sample from Frankenstein's keyboard) in between lines of the chorus, give this song a lot of character. The chorus is more rock-oriented, with the drums slamming in at exactly the right moment and the group creating another steadfast current of sound, singing a melody that dips down into darker hues and then lifts back up into joyous, bright starlight. I'm using colorful metaphors because it's a colorful song, easily topping anything on wither of their "worship" albums. (OK, I kind of liked "He Reigns", and this one'll probably never be as big, but I still maintain that it's a better song.) It inspires me the way it does because it stands out amidst its surroundings, with creation crying out in away that the other songs shine light on as God's people go out into the world and try to connect with those who don't yet know. On an album packed with "worship" songs, this one may well have just blended in, which would have been unfortunate.

Your Love Is Better than Life
I don't know if I should push ahead or stop and grieve
I lie awake and wonder how to make a city believe
I don't know when it's a ministry and when it's a show
Maybe neither, maybe both, I don't know, but this one thing I know...
Oh, man. This quirky little blast of a song is such over-the-top blast back to the 80's that I can't help but find it amusing. It's got everything - a watery, processed-ten-times-over vocal intro, a spastic workout beat, video game-like keyboard blips all over the place, and gratuitous, robotic spoken word verses that sound like the work of a poor misguided white boy who thought he was the first one to try rapping along with a rock band. Hey, did I mention that I really like this song? I didn't want that fact to get lost amidst my mercilessly poking fun at it. These guys know that they're being totally corny, and they're going to milk it for all it's worth. Fortunately, the lyrics, while resorting to a simple "I don't know anything but this one simple truth" kind of chorus, show a good deal of thought and personal struggle, especially in the second verse when Peter (or is it Phil? I honestly can't tell the difference between this band's vocalists sometimes) speed-talks about the uneasy tension between wanting to say something of spiritual value and wanting to put on a genuinely entertaining show for the people who have paid for tickets to see him do just that. Christian artists are often criticized for being too much of one and not enough of the other - the accusations go both ways, and it is extremely difficult to combine the two in a way that comes across as genuine. They've probably had more experience with this than most, given how much of a reputation the Newsboys have for gimmicky concerts with upside-down drum risers and suits changing color under different lights and so forth, and then the fact that they went and said, "Screw this rock & roll thing, we're a pious worship band" for two records - now they seem to be back at a happy medium where they can gladly embrace both sides of the "Christian musician" equation. That's the main reason that I love this song so much despite the fact that I'm almost embarrassed to play it around anyone else.

I Am Free
Through You the kingdom comes
Through You the battle's won
Through You the price is paid
Through You I'm not afraid...
Look at the lyrics, and this song appears to be frustratingly simplistic. Listen to the music, and this song feels like a joyous anthem from a prisoner set free. Those two elements so often find themselves at odds on Go, and this is probably one of the best examples of a track that I have a hard time making up my mind about. It's a slice of highly anthemic electric guitar pop that could easily be one of the best concert sing-alongs of all time, due to a chorus which provides the space for each line to be echoed back to the lead singer. It's easy to learn and sing along to, like many of the Newsboys' best songs. But due to the fact that each line feels like a recycled mantra that we've heard over and over in countless other Christian songs about escaping captivity, I don't quite feel like the song earns its own exuberance. Context is key here - I enjoy the song in the midst of its surroundings because I'm still coming off of the manic high of the previous track and this one keeps the giddy happiness going. But if I had first heard this one as many Newsboys fans heard it first - as a standalone single predating the album it would call home by more than half a year - I think I'd have been quite disappointed. (I feel similarly about Delirious? and their simple praise song "Majesty (Here I Am)", which I thought was boring at first, but I've know come to see as an essential track in their repertoire, so I suppose my perception of "I Am Free" could change with time as well.)

Secret Kingdom
This here won't be contained
By culture, wars and trendy names
Been there, done that, wore out the T-shirts
Don't need free perks, don't need knee jerks...
Alright, mates, we get it. You're making a comeback and you're trying to convince the old diehard fans that you haven't forgotten about the goofy fun of songs like "Breakfast". Are you gonna do this every time you return to a more familiar sound after trying something different that your core fans don't respond as well to? You did "Live in Stereo" on Thrive, and that one sort of established its own identity even though the syncopated beat and the whistling clearly indicated that it was more or less a Cousin Oliver to the superior "Breakfast". But this? This is a total ripoff of "Breakfast", and you guys aren't even trying to hide it. The bouncy riffs from the piano and guitar, the blatant whistling in the bridge - it's all of the same ingredients, just wrapped around a different melody. Sure, the lyrics are about something different - for once, you've got a really clever lyric about not wanting to waste time on the same old youth-groupy cliches that so often turn people off to Christianity, and you decide to accompany that with music which so blatantly re-uses some of the now-classic elements from that same song? Bad move. I know, you're trying to be all ironic by pointing out that you're referencing your own song ("This here knows that whistles make for better mixes"), but being aware of your own crime doesn't excuse it. Look, you don't woo back old fans by rehashing obvious elements from their favorite songs or albums. You win them back by showing the same creative, fun-loving spirit that brought us those songs in the first place when we hadn't heard you do anything quite like that before. On rare days when I have amnesia, this is a fun song, so I'll give it marginal credit, but for the most part, I'm just reminded of how far superior Take Me to Your Leader is to this album.

The Letter (One of a Kind)
Sometimes everything's too much
Like the deepest cut, you hurt to be touched...
To my ears, this one feels a lot like "Let It All Come Out", only more simplified, with less ambience and less passion. It's a ballad with rather predictable plunking on a piano, a rather predictable melody, and a mid-tempo beat that isn't really trying to be anything special. All of this is a backdrop for a lyric which throws every cliché in the book at a person who's hurting. Peter's written her a letter, I guess, which says things like, "Child, you're like a star, set apart from the start of the world." And a lyric about how God cares uniquely for every individual He created, though they're all as numerous as the stars in the sky, could be a great starting point for a song, but the Newsboys just never get there with this one. Vague sentiments about how "special" someone is are kind of easy to see through, because it's obvious that you could be saying the same things about pretty much anyone. What's unique about the particular person to whom the song is written? Emphasize that, and maybe we'll have a better song for it.

Gonna Be Alright
Inside me there's a child afraid
Of moving in and getting close
Inside you there's a world of healing
Ever free, so dangerous...
Man, I remember when the Newsboys used to place some powerful, deep songs towards the end of their albums. That tradition started to fall by the wayside after "Always" on Step Up to the Microphone, but only in small degreees at first. Nobody really noticed "Fall on You" at the end of Love Liberty Disco, and it's not one of my favorites or anything, but it still left the listener with a little bit of a challenge, a "dare you to move" sort of sentiment. Even as hackneyed as "Lord (I Don't Know)" was at the end of Thrive, it at least acknowledge some value to admitting that we don't have to know all the answers in the midst of great ragedies such as the 9/11 attacks. Now we've got one of the worst cliches in the book - the album-ending "Everything's gonna be alright" ballad. It's hard to do one of these that's as irritating as the one that The Killers came up with, but Peter sure starts things off on the wrong foot with some surprisingly weak falsetto singing. Duncan and Jeff try to spice things up with a slowed-down hip-hop beat and tiny bits of scratching and sampling, which includes gratuitous amounts of air-time for an extremely annoying sample of a woman's voice singing "Oh, how He loves you and me", as if Peter were doing some sort of a duet with this distant recording. It doesn't work. It's a boring song with absolutely nothing interesting to say and nothing enjoyable to listen to. I can't definitely say that it's the worst Newsboys song ever - I honestly wouldn't want to have to go back and listen more carefully to their worship albums and their 80's albums in order to find out. But it's definitely the worst track on any Newsboys album that I would actually still buy despite its presence.

I'm going to go with a very cautious recommendation for Go. It's worth checking out if you're a disgruntled Newsboys fan who lost interest somewhere in between Love Liberty Disco and the whole worship debacle, but I don't expect that it'll blow your mind and turn you back into a diehard fan. It's got a few new songs that are really worth hearing, and most of the rest is at least harmless. I was all excited at first that this was better than their worship albums, but that ain't saying much, so take any hype you hear about how "The Newsboys are back!" with several grains of salt. Go at least adds a new Newsboys classic or three to the canon, which is more than I can say for Love Liberty Disco (an album I often defend, but more for its interesting subtleties than its actual songs). So if you're new to the band, then please start with some of their 90's material and come back around for this one later. If you just like programming-driven rock bands that reminds you of your favorite late 20th-century decades, then hey, you might want to give it a try, if you're willing to ignore lyrics on several occasions. I enjoy it largely for that reason. They're better than they were, so I'll give the 'boys my marginal support for now in the hopes that it's simply the beginning of an upward trend in overall quality.

ALBUM WORTH:
Wherever We Go $.50
Go $1
Something Beautiful $2
The Mission $1
Let It All Come Out $1
In Wonder $1.50
Your Love Is Better than Life $1.50
I Am Free $1
Secret Kingdom $.50
The Letter (One of a Kind)$0
Gonna Be Alright -$.50
TOTAL: $9.50

Band Members:
Peter Furler: Lead vocals, guitar, drums
Jeff Frankenstein: Keyboards, bass, backing vocals
Duncan Phillips: Drums, percussion
Paul Colman: Guitar, backing vocals
Phil Joel: Bass, backing vocals (no longer with the band)

Website: http://www.newsboys.com

(* Yes, I stole that joke from Mitch Hedberg and slightly modified it. I'll check the mailbox later this week for the lawsuit papers.)

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving