Future of Forestry was one of my favorite bands of 2006. They were one of those groups, like The Listening or Mute Math, that immediately captivated me with a high-energy but meditative modern rock sound, with a synthetic keyboard element that played wonderfully off of the band's rocking energy. Like those other two bands, they had the advantage of essentially being the re-christened version of another band that I liked or at least found interesting (in this case, the similarly-minded Something Like Silas, which had changed its lineup to the one currently present in Future of Forestry before deciding to change the name). And my response to their introductory EP was similar to how I reacted to Mute Math's - it was tasty enough that I could play it in its entirety twice through and get more enjoyment from that despite the repetition than I got from a lot of full-length LPs. The fact that they didn't get a full album out until last year is the only reason that the band didn't make my Top 10 list last year (although I did have a sneak peak at their full-length before 2006 came to a close). This year, they've got a good shot at that list, with Twilight, an album which strikes a delicate balance between anthemic, worshipful rock songs and intimate, vulnerable, reflective moments that reach a bit deeper than your average "worship band" cares to go.

I know that hyping new bands with bold claims can often be a sure-fire recipe for overselling them to a potential audience, but I'll say this much: These guys have a shot at being the next Delirious? They're that good at what they do. For those not familiar with Delirious?, imagine some of U2's more unabashedly spiritual moments, but slightly more keyboard-driven and matched up with ambient indie rock sensibilities a la Sigur Ros. I might actually see more of a tendency toward rocking crescendos on Twilight than the Sigur Ros-isms of Something Like Silas's material, but both iterations of this band are still quite melodic, and not at all "indie" in their production qualities or the way that they handle melodies. Songs with beautiful melodies and strong, driving rhythms are allowed to wear those elements loud and proud, and it's an excellent balance between artistic complexity and reverent simplicity that Christian radio stations would be all over if they didn't have their heads up their collective butts when composing their narrow-minded playlists.

Now, in an attempt to not overhype this, I will say that Twilight is not a perfect album. It has its moments where the reflective repetition gets a bit tedious, the lyrics get slightly youth-groupy, or songs otherwise feel like they haven't been fully realized. While lead singer Eric Owyoung is a man who chooses his words carefully, he often doesn't use a lot of them. That hurts the back half of the album a bit. Also problematic is the fact that, for fans who bought the group's self-titled EP, three of those songs are repeated (though they are fine songs and I know the EP was really just an album preview with a few extra songs tacked on), so we only get nine new songs here - ten if you count the bonus track, but that number drops to seven if you take out the songs that I feel are really just incomplete fragments that got extended into full songs. That's about the only thing keeping Twilight from being a five-star album. Sound-wise, it achieves an uneasy balance between being delightfully catchy and strikingly beautiful. Lots of Christian bands achieve the former, at least on a superficial level, and lots of art rock bands achieve the latter, but it's tough to do both. That alone tells me that FoF's got some real potential.

In any event, you'll notice as I get into the individual song reviews here that I'm repeating myself while covering the first three songs. That's because those songs all appeared on the EP, and exactly the same versions are present here. From track 4 on out, it's all new material that was worth taking the effort to say something new about.

Open Wide
Heaven sure fell hard upon you
Hard upon you now
In the end, you know that you've been found
You're found...
The opening track is a good introduction to what FoF's "fast songs" sound like. The wonderful complexity of Spencer Kim's rolling drums sets a dense rhythmic pattern, with Luke's bass lines running neatly through the percussive obstacle course, and Nick Maybury's trembling guitar adding a touch of ambiance. This song and the next actually function as messages from God to man, offering consolation to a believer who feels trapped in a deep canyon, asking them to open up and receive a new spiritual beginning of sorts. The chorus, which opens up into more of a conventional, celebratory, slamming rhythm, using its encouragement to challenge further growth - "You're too alive to just stay here." I've always related more to songs that portray the Christian life as a constant ongoing process rather than a one-time arrival, so FoF is off to a solid start here.

All I Want
I will go where glory meets the crude and weak
I will go where mercy meets the shame
I will go where strength will find the small and meek
I will go where magic meets mundane...
The keyboard influence comes to the forefront here as this song starts off with a beautiful, starry, synthesized loop that runs underneath yet another example of a beautifully syncopated rhythm. This song has a really magical effect on me as a listener, probably due to the juxtaposition of raw rocking power and technology. It's a song about looking for God in difficult, out-of-the-way places where man's weakness is found and God's glory can be shown most profoundly. The response to this is a simple, but driven and passionate chorus, where the delivery makes up for words that might otherwise come across as repetitive and simplistic: "You're all I want, You're all I want, You're all I find, You have my heart forever, You are all that I could need." I don't tend to mind simple choruses like these when there are verses that lead into them with more complex, profound thoughts - this was how Eric Owyoung succeeded in pulling me in during much of the Divine Invitation album, and the strategy works beautifully here as well. I have a minor complaint about the short one-chord jam at the end of the song, which seems like a monotonous way to cap off such a lovely performance, but still, this track deftly fuses the band's appetite for both aggression and pristine beauty.

Twilight
Is it nostalgia? Is it the sun?
'Cause it won't leave us alone
And we're still young...
The disc's third song - which is one of its mellowest entries - gives off a warm, orange glow as the lovely bells and keys and xylophone (and theremin - do you have any clue how difficult that instrument is to play?) play off of the midnight blue background provided by the pensive bass intro. This song has the feeling of an ending coming back around to become a beginning, if that makes any sense at all - there's this vague sense of sadness that the sun is going down on a life or perhaps a relationship, and Eric wants to reach back and retrieve the memories as this unnamed thing dies, and yet there's some sort of hope that hope will be found in the dark night ahead. There's an echoing background vocal which calls out into the night, and Eric's tender voice reaches near-falsetto as he sings the calming words - "In this twilight, we are pale. On this frail side, nothing else could be so real." The admission at the beginning on the song that "Once upon a time, we were young, we thought we escaped from it all" makes me wonder if Eric pondering the end of his marriage and what went wrong here - the song may not be about that specifically, but the sadness felt in a situation like that, and the need to look ahead and trust that there will be healing a new beginning, seems to have informed this lovely song.

Speak to Me Gently
I'm searching the stars in desperate hours
Bound to find meaning
God shows a face in this desolate place
And tenderness meets me...
It actually felt odd to have such a mellow track as "Twilight" come so early in the album, so it feels doubly weird here to have another extremely mellow song at only track four. Momentum issues aside, this track has a more subtle beauty to it, with its simple two-note acoustic guitar riff (with one of the notes changing with the chord progression, counting off the 6/8 rhythm in three calmly measured pairs) providing the musical backbone for Eric's hushed prayer as He asks God to meet him in a secluded place, and gently sings what he imagines the response to his prayer to be: "Can you just feel the signs? Love waits for you". Nick accompanies with the gentle, melodic hum of his electric guitar, and the entire band is much more relaxed here, applying careful texture rather than raw rocking power, and while the song can almost feel too measured at first, like a more rigid "Spirit Waltz", it has a tenderness to it which sinks in with repeated listens.

Thinking of You
Edna, don't you wait until tomorrow to find your soul
Faint reminds still will follow you everywhere you go
'Cause you are not alone
But made like heaven, made like starlight, made of love...
The switch back to "rock-out" mode is almost too abrupt here, with the first verse of this song starting immediately, and nary an intro, but it was a good move to not put another mellow song in this slot. Eric's lyrics speak to a specific person named "Edna" here, taking a song with a title that you'd expect to lead to generic lyrics and filling it with something a little more thoughtful. It's hard to say whether the woman he's addressing is a female friend who tends to forget her need for spiritual guidance, or a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's, or whatever else, but in any case, I feel for her when he reminds her during the slamming chorus: "When you're out of your amnesia day, you'll know how much I've been thinking of you". Spencer shows a smart ability to play with the rhythm here, doing part of the chorus in an energetic, triple-pulse sort of beat, and then alternating to more of a typical 4/4. It's like they intentionally tweaked the chorus to make sure it didn't come off like a Coldplay song. I love how the increasingly impassioned ending of the song jumps away from the expected chord which would resolve the melody, and pulls a quick key change before dissipating into synthesized mist.

Sunrising
In the gold flood of light
Where the earth meets summer skies
In the satin chill of night
Where dreams await to rise...
Without a doubt, this is the most ingenious of the "new" songs which weren't present on the EP. I kind of see it as the thematic counterpart to "Twilight" - where that song was somber and reserved, describing the sun setting on a passing phase of life, this one describes rays of morning sunlight marking the first signs of a hopeful transformation which extends into infinity. It plays like a ballad at first, but much like "Please" on Divine Invitation, it becomes a boisterous layered affair - this time even more so than many of the other intense musical moments on the album. In between the calm synthetic notes that open the song and the string-drenched flourish (complete with another unexpected key change) at the end, there's a furious break with an outpour of trembling electric guitar, ringing bells, and Spencer's drums overflowing into an exercise in organized chaos, where the loud banging and clattering never throws off the 4/4 rhythm of the sound, but certainly sounds like it is doing so to the untrained ear. Eric's language is at its most poetic here, and as he stretches out those words "Eternal visions of... of love...", there's this neat little guitar run from Nick that is very U2-esque - you're torn between gushing over how beautiful that moment is and loudly declaring, "This ROCKS!!!"

Sacred Place
You embrace me, and You calm me
You persuade me, You console me...
The immediate jolt of drums kick off this song, but in a moody, distant, groove-laden fashion, as if to indicate that we're gonna meditate for a little while longer instead of totally rocking out. And just when we get used to that, they fall away and we're left with icy keyboards and a solemn invocation: "Come into this scared place". This is how you start off a worship service if you're part of the art rock crowd, I suppose - a deep, bass-laden groove (Spencer Kim and bassist Luke Floeter lock together in a deviously beautiful fashion here) that breaks ever now and then for a quiet, melancholy refrain from Eric, and then starts kicking about again. As the song builds, wintry female vocals add color to the background, intoning fragments of words that sound like "Sweet hallelujah" but seem to be there more for texture than for communication. I'm glad that they decided to include female vocals in at least one of their songs, because the one element I dearly miss from the Something Like Silas days is the voice of former keyboard player Malina Owyoung. The band has stated that they'll probably keep the lineup all guys from hre on out, but it's still nice to have the feminine touch (and thankfully, Eric and Nick have been able to take over the keyboard duties).

You and I
So take me to the inside, the inside of Your heart
Take me to the depths of who You are
Shake me with Your wonder, stir me with Your grace
Lighting every dark and empty space...
This one, I'm not so sure about. It's an earnest enough rocker, getting revved up with its warbling guitar intro and leading into a simple but upbeat reflection about what it's like to be in a place of harmony with God, but it's kind of like "When I Search" on Divine Invitation - a little more conventional, close to what Christian radio usually looks for, and ultimately a bit too youth-groupy because of it. The music of course still tries harder, with its lovely guitar flourishes, and avoids being the usual power-chord crunch-fest that a "rock worship" song like this would normally be if played by most other Christian bands. But the chorus makes the dire mistake of starting off with these words: "When it's You and I, then my heart can sing." That's CCM magnetic poetry if I've ever seen it. The delicate keys and the sudden switch to programmed percussion in the bridge is a nice touch - performance-wise, they've given it their all. It's just the construction of the song that bugs me. Too basic. Go deeper!

Sanctitatis
This is one of those songs that feels more like a long interlude than a full song. It takes a wonderful, shimmering guitar riff and a slow, thick rhythm, and slowly builds layers until Eric finally comes in with a brief, otherworldly Latin chant. I have no idea what it means (though "Sanctitatis Domine" probably means something to the effect of "Holiest Lord God" - can any Catholics help me out here?), but Eric's slow intonation of the words is quite lovely. Unfortunately, after that, it's mostly the same old guitar melody and pounding rhythm kicking about for a few more minutes. If trimmed to two minutes or so, it would make a lovely call to worship at the beginning of an album, but here, it feels like an out-of-place (though sonically addictive) experiment that came from a song fragment that they weren't quite sure how to develop into something more. (Indeed, it turned out to be the opening number when I saw them in concert last night.)

If You Find Her
She won't falter easy, she'll be careful she'll be coy
But still she paints her heart among the musings of a boy...
For those who liked having their heartstrings tugged (and maybe even for a few who normally don't), this track is going to be one of the most surprising and memorable on the record. It's completely acoustic, and lushly performed, with Eric's voice at its most vulnerable - it stands out in much the same way that "More than Words" did when placed next to every other song that Extreme ever recorded. It's haunting because Future of Forestry is easy to peg as a "worship" band and they deliberately color outside the lines with songs like this one which are clearly about the fairer sex. In this case it's a simple expression of longing for someone unknown young woman who Eric can't manage to locate. "If you find her, tell her that I love her. If she hears you, ask her heart to come." It could have been written after the dissolution of his first marriage - it definitely has that quality of having lost someone special lurking about in the gentle, but melancholy melody. Or it could be about looking ahead to new life and a new blossoming romance (Eric thanks his wife in the liner notes, so I guess he found love again) - it works either way. What's disappointing here, though, is the lack of words to really flesh out the song. There are two lines to each verse, and a two-line chorus, and lots of gentle "Mmmmmmmm"s to add extra sensitivity to the song, which works fantastically - but seriously, that's all you have to say on the subject? The lyrical minimalism reduces an otherwise fabulous song to mere fragments of what it could have been.

Gazing
When my world was folding
God, You saw my prayers were flowing
Flowing out like rivers to Your heart...
Taking us into this final stretch is another more conventional upbeat number, with some neat drum rolls and the ringing of a xylophone during the intro (which neatly fits the line "glory bells are ringing" in the first verse). It's not as fast and furious as some of the earlier rockers, but there's a sense of liberation to the chorus, as Eric describes gazing into God's "wondrous grace" and feeling like a child again. This band carries such a powerful feeling of rebirth in so much of their writing, and the music communicates it as well as the lyrics do. Nick gets another crack at a slightly warped guitar solo here - it's not as viscerally powerful as the one in "All I Want", but it's still a powerful moment, and the song's chorus seems to be twice as energetic as it originally was when the band returns to it one last time.

Stay Beside Me
When the beautiful unfolds
And my longing touches heaven
With a love, love, love that fills
You come, You make us one...
Perhaps the band's most conventional song of praise, this one employs a more familiar guitar strum, bringing us into more familiar territory as they close out the album. Much like the classic SLS song "Words that You Say", this song's strength lies in how it builds from a simple strumming pattern into a powerful, sweeping wave of sound as it draws close to the end. Nick's cloud-like strokes on the electric guitar hint at the building sound early on, and slowly piano and backing vocals are added, but the drums don't kick in and really get things going until the song's bridge, which is a delicious payoff, infusing the song with infectious confidence. Somehow this enables them to get away with such simple phrasing as "You are love, You are grace, You are kindness and compassion", where a band employing these same words in a normal pop/rock setting might not be able to make such phrases seem convincing. The song fades out on a final unresolved chord as the acoustic strumming whines down and the ambience bleeds away into silence.

Nothing Like You
A long way into the final track - past the 10 minute mark actually - this hidden song suddenly breaks out of the silence, in an almost startling fashion as its trembling guitars and rolling cymbals hit like a certain burst of light, underpinned by heavenly chords from an organ. This would be a beautiful setup for an otherworldly benediction - unfortunately, Eric chooses to waste it on two lines of lyrics repeated ad nauseum - "There is nothing like You, there is no one else". Seriously, that's the whole song, and it feels tedious at only three and a half minutes. Sorry guys - you might have gotten away with this one if you didn't have "Sanctitatis" on the same album. Most days, I simply don't feel like waiting or fast-forwarding through the long silence to get to this hidden song snippet, so I generally just stop the CD there or skip back around to "Open Wide".

But seriously. One track that's a little too cliched for its own good and a few others that mistake pure ambience for song structure are the only significant criticisms that I can make here. I suppose I could get on the band's case for wowing me with the hard-hitting "Renovation" and the gloriously flowing "Stilled" on the EP, and then dropping those in favor of lesser songs when putting a full album together, but if every song from the EP made the cut, then the EP would have outlived its usefulness once the LP was released. So I understand that - it was a rare EP where every song was excellent and any of them would have been a tough sacrifice to make. The overall balance here is quite good, and even the lesser songs sound gorgeous for the most part, so if this is how Future of Forestry makes a 4-star album, I can't wait to hear how they make a 5-star one. These guys can do it. Their core members (Eric and Nick) have been part of two albums that hit so close to that mark, and they've acquired a solid bass player and an amazingly energetic drummer along the way, so their future definitely looks more like sunrise than twilight to me.

ALBUM WORTH:
Open Wide $1.50
All I Want $2
Twilight $2
Speak to Me Gently $1.50
Thinking of You $1.50
Sunrising $2
Sacred Place $1.50
You and I $.50
Sanctitatis $.50
If You Find Her $1
Gazing $1
Stay Beside Me $1
Nothing Like You $0
TOTAL: $16

Band Members:
Eric Owyoung: Lead vocals, guitars, keyboards
Nick Maybury: Lead guitar, vocals, keyboards, theremin
Luke Floeter: Bass, keyboards
Spencer Kim: Drums, programming

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

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening