The David Crowder Band enjoys a reputation that, while rare among Christian rock bands, is rare still among the subset known as "worship bands" - they're known for putting a healthy dose of intelligence and creativity into the albums that they record. In a sub-sub-genre that often relies on the oldest and most emotionally manipulative tricks in the book to make listeners feel "blessed" when in reality they're not being challenged or changed much by the music, the DCB has stood out with their last few albums for infusing the "modern worship" style with a strong dose of personality and reflective thought. After what I considered to be a fairly unremarkable label debut (2002's Can You Hear Us?), they managed to get me onto the bandwagon with 2003's Illuminate, a deftly constructed album that explored themes of light and creation. But it was 2005's A Collision that really turned heads, with its near-whiplash approach to blending styles and exploring themes. That album transitioned from song to song about as smoothly as a car with square tires, but it showed a formidable, almost restless spirit of exploration on the band's part, and while it had its drawbacks, I couldn't help but beam with pride as I imagined how that record would baffle and hopefully engage the brains of listeners who were just expecting some nice praise music to put on in the background.

But the tricky thing about establishing a good reputation is that you have to maintain it. It may be true that one or two strong albums will cause some fans to give you the benefit of the doubt for every album from that point forward, but frankly I've never been that type of fan. Once I hear a group putting out quality music with a good amount of thought put into it, it's always a bit discouraging to see them scale things back for a simpler approach, and that's sort of what I feel that the DCB did with their latest album, Remedy. Compare this new release to A Collision, and the contrasts are striking. Gone is the lengthy track listing, with a lean, mean, cycle of 10 songs (none of them cutely titled interludes, I should note) in its place. The wild genre-hopping has been scaled back here - you'll still get the core David Crowder Band sound that you've come to love, with its idiosyncratic blend of digital bleeps and bloops amidst the more laidback acoustic rock that they've become known for, but there are no classical interludes, or rowdy hoedowns, or glitchy, IDM-styled song intros. Truth be told, they're playing things surprisingly straight here.

Of course I don't mean to imply that the band never had their simplistic, jump-up-and-down-to-the-same-repeated-line songs in the past - each album's had at least one or two. Nor do I intend to make it look like this album has nothing going on upstairs. There are still some beautifully layered compositions, and a few well-worded verses that go beyond the usual "say nice things about God" to provoke the listener with questions about how this reverence we feel for God should actually change the way we live. But I'll be honest - read the lyric sheet, and much of this album looks rather vapid, especially in its midsection (excluding one fantastic modernized hymn). You can afford fun, fluffy diversions when you've got a generous, sprawling album with upwards of 15 songs - on a 10-song album, though, they all pretty much need to hit home. And this is where David Crowder and his cronies went wrong - the music almost always sets the mood wonderfully, but the lyrics are frustratingly minimal. On the few songs that do seem to mean more, the music isn't terrible, but it does feel a bit subdued in comparison, as if the band couldn't figure out how to marry a gorgeous crescendo with a thought-provoking lyric like they could on past albums. This might cost them some of the more cerebral portion of their fan base, even if those who are in it for the emotional high will find nothing to complain about. I'm kind of in between the two audiences, and as a result, I think this album is merely a little bit above average. Remedy maintains the DCB's uniqueness, but falls short of the concepts that I feel like the brilliant minds in this band really desired to communicate.

The Glory of It All
All is lost, find Him there, find Him there
After night, dawn is there, dawn is there
And after all falls apart
He repairs, He repairs...
Crowder seems to prefer to start his albums off in more of a reflective mood - Illuminate was the lone exception with the upbeat "Revolutionary Love". This one starts with a rather subdued acoustic strum and carefully builds, with glistening keyboards and simple piano working their way into the mix during the first chorus, but with the song as a whole not really taking off until about midway through its 5-minute duration. I've grown to like the song despite it getting off to a slow start - the lyrics are so simple as to feel like fragments of thoughts, simple meditations on God's presence and ability to change us in all situations. When we get to the reflective bridge, where the piano meets up with Mike Hogan's pretty violin solo, is where the beauty of this one really starts to come forward, and the song becomes a joyous affirmation of changed lives as it ascends towards its eventual climax. This seems to be the album's theme - actual transformation that affects everyday life, rather than just paying lip service to God with the usual churchy language that doesn't really affect the people singing those words.

Can You Feel It?
Life makes it so hard sometimes to know what's real
When I can't feel You there
When I can't see You there
When I can't comprehend that You are there...
A bit of DJ scratching gets this fun dance-rock number underway rather suddenly - this is the big, awe-filled, futuristic-sounding number that the band's gotta have at least one of on every record. Lyrically it's about as simple as they come, asking whether we can feel God's presence and affirming that it is here in our midst - but there's a twist that my ears didn't pick up at first. The chorus seems to be simply saying "I can feel You here, I can see You here", etc., which seems like a rather run-of-the-mill thing for a praise song to say, but looking at the lyric sheet, the "can" turned out to be "can't". So it's really about how God goes beyond something that can be detected with the five senses, and about acknowledging that God is working in the midst of His people during the times when they can't sense it at all. It reminds us that we have faith in something which is not physically tangible and not scientifically proven.I kind of wish the lyrics did more to correct those dots instead of basically just saying, "We can't actually feel it, but we believe it anyway." I think Christians will understand what Crowder's getting at, but it might have helped to flesh out the concept a little more. Extremely fun song, though. The piano solo during the calm bridge is especially well-timed.

Everything Glorious
My eyes are small but they have seen
The beauty of enormous things
Which leads me to believe
There's light enough to see...
The previous track collides very suddenly into this mid-tempo anthem, which has an irresistible acoustic riff that runs throughout the whole thing. The band gets a solid groove going for this one, ensuring that the tune gets stuck in your head, and the lyrics remind me of the sort of song that Chris Tomlin might write, mentioning how creation opens our eyes to see how God makes everything glorious. The lyrics honestly wouldn't be anything special if not for a single line, well-placed at the end of the chorus, that poses the question, "What does that make me?" The intrinsic answer is, of course, that God makes us glorious as well, so there's that theme of change subtly working its way into this song as well. It's sort of two points at once - on the one hand, if we've made glorious by God, then we need not be so down on ourselves, but on the other hand, if it's God that made us glorious, we didn't do it ourselves, so we have to keep our egos in check. I like how little nuggets of theology that we knew to be true but perhaps hadn't thought of in quite the way they're being expressed can be dug out of some of Crowder's simplest lyrics even when they seem rather straightforward, though I often find myself wishing he'd expound on these concepts with more full-bodied phrasing.

...neverending...
And this makes all the difference
This changes everything
Making our whole existence
Worth something, so we sing...
Here's the first song on the album that I really have a beef with - it's a fast-paced poppy rocker that the band just rips through and finishes it up before you've had enough time to even realize what happened, and it's so musically similar to "Foreverandever, Etc." from the previous album, which was an inferior cousin to "No One Like You" from Illuminate, so really, did we need to rehash this same musical idea three times? This doesn't even take into account the fact that the verses have this child's song sort of quality to them - Crowder ruminates in the most simplistic way possible on the meaning of how God is, was, and will always be, and he does it with a rather robotic flow, the syllables spaced very evenly. It feels like a rather cheap way of getting people to sing along, especially with the refrain of "la, la, la". This isn't a song I'd present as evidence that the DCB is a "thinking man's worship band". I have to admit, however, that I was highly amused when I saw these guys in concert last week, and saw that they had configured a Guitar Hero controller with the chords for this song (all four of 'em), so that Crowder could actually use it as part of the live show. (That's an extremely addictive game, by the way. Leave it to these guys to be geeky enough to figure out how to use the controller in their live set.)

You Never Let Go
When clouds brought rain and disaster came
Oh, my soul, oh, my soul
When waters rose and hope had flown
Oh, my soul, oh, my soul...
We very suddenly transition from an upbeat toe-tapper into a simple piano ballad that tells us... you guessed it, that God never lets go. I really can't find much to enjoy about this one - it's way too simple and the chorus it too repetitive and touchy-feely for my tastes (just the title repeated three times). I can hear the violin humming in the background, the drums lightly tapping, and so forth, but the band never really bursts out with a display of emotion here, so the song feels a bit undercooked as a result. If you're going to be this repetitive and simplistic, then you're gonna have to rely on the music to really convey the feeling. There's a bit of a Coldplay-ish swell near the end, but nothing really seems to come of it, just the awkward rhyme "In joy and pain, sun and rain, You're the same." The songwriting has suddenly dropped to about a fifth grade reading level, which is disconcerting, because this is the sort of thing I seriously downgrade a lot of other Christian bands for.

O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
He breaks the power of canceled sin
He sets the prisoners free
His blood can make the foulest clean
His blood availed for me...
Well, here's a refreshing change of pace. When you need some solid, theologically rich lyrics, there's often no better place to look than some of the classic hymns that have survived the church's weeding process over the past few centuries. They picked a great one here, which is full of descriptive and reverent language, and the band treats it joyfully, giving it an upbeat, sort of Celtic flair to celebrate what it feels like to know you're one of the "foulest" and to realize you've been made clean despite the worst things you've done. It's a nice balance between the organic rhythm of the song (it's played in the original 6/8 time instead of forcing it into 4/4 like the "modernized" version I was previously used to, but it is sped up a bit) and the band's love for electronic noodling. One thing that took a little bit of getting used to was the fact that Crowder actually came up with his own chorus for this one - I've heard a lot of modern "hymn revivals" that have added catchy choruses to beloved hymns, often with a bit of an oil-and-water effect as I've realized how poorly the pedestrian phrases penned by the modern writer mix with the classic verses I grew up with. And yeah, Crowder's chorus is a bit more simple - "So come on and sing out, let our anthem grow loud, there is one great love, Jesus" - but it fits well enough once you grow accustomed to it.

Rain Down
Holy, holy is the Lord
Holy, holy is the Lord...
The band's made it a tradition of sorts to redo at least one old song from their indie days on each album - this time around it's a reworking of an upbeat anthem from 1999's All I Can Say. I'm not familiar with the original, but from what I understand, they've fleshed out the music a lot. It's quite a lovely dance between the soaring electric guitar, B-Wack's pounding drums, and the tiny little electronic droplets which continually pelt the song, infusing it with an infectious energy. If all I had to consider here was the music, this track would get an A. But I think the band made a huge mistake by not adding more lyrics to this one. The only verse that we get simply repeats "Holy, holy is the Lord", and the chorus is just the repeated request for God to rain down His love, grace, etc., upon us. I suppose that such simple words might work well as a liturgical interlude on an album that had more "full songs" present, but having a full song that is so sparsely written really seems like the easy way out. It's a technical accomplishment, moving from a big "full-band" sound to an acoustic fadeout that then allows the electronics to bleed back in and give the track a glitchy but reflective ending (think "Intoxicating", but not as long and not as "jam session" oriented). I'm sure it'd be a blast in concert (they didn't play it when I saw them), but the recorded version can't quite stand up against the band's better songs.

We Won't Be Quiet
You're everything we could ever want
You're everything we could ever need
You're the reason we're coming here
You're the reason we're gonna sing...
Here comes "Silly Little Youth Group Anthem #2", which is clearly modeled after the somewhat inane "We Win!" from A Collision. After a somewhat random electronic intro that sounds straight out of an exercise video from the early 80's, we get plenty of noisy guitar riffage in yet another fast-paced rocker that flies by in little more than two minutes - believe it or not, the guitar solo in this one was played by none other than Ted Nugent (a.k.a "The Nuge" and about ten other nicknames that Crowder excitedly lists in the album credits). Apparently he and the DCB both call Waco, Texas home, and one day Crowder and Nugent were introduced to each other, and Nugent made a passing comment about coming by the studio to see what the guys were up to, which they weren't sure whether to take seriously, but it turns out he meant it, so they let him play on a track just for the fun of it. And they sang through bullhorns or something. You can shout along to the "No! No! No!"s and sing the chorus at the top of your lungs and be loud and proud and insist that the world can't shut you up about God... but all that's just there to distract you from another minimally-written song. There's just one verse which gets repeated, and it's pretty much over after the second chorus. Not much going on upstairs in this one, I'm afraid.

Remedy
So we lift up our voices, and open our hands
Let go of the things that have kept us from Him...
Things get a bit more thoughtful for the title track, which waves together piano, violin and mandolin rather wonderfully in 3/4 time, juxtaposing Crowder's description of humans as wounded beings needing urgent medical help with God's role as the great healer - the repeated "Here we are" and "Here you are" frame his descriptions nicely. He's really driving home God's love for the people who are too messed up to fix themselves, and making that admission a "we" statement rather than a "they" statement. It's the sort of song that sinks in slowly rather than blowing you away right at the beginning, but after listening to it a few times I've decided that it's quite beautifully executed.

Surely We Can Change
And the problem is this, we were bought with a kiss
But the cheek still turned even when it wasn't hit
And I don't know what to do with a love like that
And I don't know how to be a love like that...
The record ends much like it began, with Crowder looking back on this brief worship set, and basically asking, "So what? Does this change anything?" He's admitting that despite how he can sing about God loving us and us loving God, he's still capable of being a jerk and basically slapping Jesus in the fact at times, and he's asking God not just to fix things for all of these hurting people who need help, but to use him as part of that "remedy", to change him first so that he might help bring that change to others. It's a very intimate song - one in which you can hear the acoustic guitar squeaking as Crowder moves between chords, and bass player Mike Dodson helps out by playing a cello here, while one of the other guys carefully adds a few notes from a xylophone in the background, which reminds me a bit of an Andrew Bird song, though decidedly less weird. I like the theme of asking God to let us play an active part, rather than just passively asking God to fix the whole world. The song climaxes on the simultaneously glorious and terrifying revelation that "The whole word's about to change", before suddenly claming down again and trailing off into nothing as Crowder picks out his last simple notes on the guitar. Not much of an ending from a musical standpoint, but it's still a well-written song with a soothing musical mood that makes me think I could come to love it in much the same way that I gradually learned to love "Stars", the final track on Illuminate.

I feel like I could be more forgiving of some of the "minimal" songs on this album if it just had more content in general - surely there must be a happy meaning between this "trim the fat" approach and the joyous mayhem of A Collision. I'm not a "less is more" kind of guy when it comes to music, so those who prefer for albums to be concise and to the point may see Remedy's apparent weakness as a strength. Maybe 12 tracks would be a good compromise next time? Or maybe it doesn't matter if the songs as a whole are thought-provoking enough to truly carry the theme of the album? In any case, I think Crowder and Co. can do better - I still have a lot of respect for them and consider myself a big fan, but I definitely hope they get back into the mode of pushing themselves artistically when it comes time to work on their next album.

ALBUM WORTH:
The Glory Of It All $1.50
Can You Feel It? $1.50
Everything Glorious $1.50
...neverending... $.50
You Never Let Go $0
O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing $1.50
Rain Down $1
We Won't Be Quiet $.50
Remedy $1.50
Surely We Can Change $1.50
TOTAL: $11

Band Members:
David Crowder: Lead vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, programming, theremin, keytar, Guitar Hero controller
Jack Parker: Electric guitar, Rhodes piano, banjo
Mike Dodson: Bass, programming and keyboards
Jeremy Bush (a.k.a. B-Wack): Drums, percussion, programming
Mike Hogan: Violin, DJ, programming
Mark Waldrop: Electric guitar

Websites:
http://www.davidcrowderband.com
http://www.myspace.com/davidcrowderband
http://www.xanga.com/emprise34 (David Crowder's Blog)

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Waking up