Before I start this review, let me just get one thing out of the way - I’ve forgiven the guys in Jars of Clay. The news get out while they were working on their latest album, The Eleventh Hour, that they were big Mac lovers and that they were recording and mixing the entire thing, as well as putting together the album art, on their beloved Macintosh computers. Apple had this little tidbit plastered on their website, and I’m not used to Jars of Clay so closely aligning themselves with a commercial product, let alone one that I can’t stand. But I’m over it now. I guess they’re still my favorite band.

Alright, all technology biases aside, let me say two things. First of all, The Eleventh Hour, which releases on March 5th, is an excellent album. Second of all, it’s probably Jars of Clay’s weakest album so far (disregarding their independent album Frail, their live collection Stringtown, and a random assortment of demos known as The White Elephant Sessions). How can it be both? Well, you see, I’ve been a huge fan of the band ever since their self-titled release came out way back in 1995. That was before “Flood” had the chance to get really big. They’ve managed to surprise me - and most of their fans - with each album since then. 1997’s Much Afraid and 1999’s If I Left the Zoo took a lot of getting used to - neither were as instantly classic as the self-titled record, but both proved to be solidly creative records with solid songs. Most fans enjoyed these records but kept coming back to the first as the watershed example of Jars of Clay’s talent, simply because it was chock full of classics. I came to embrace Much Afraid as their best work, personally, which puts me in the minority among Jars of Clay fans. In any case, I’ve known to expect change from Jars of Clay. I’ve known since I finished digesting Zoo that their next album would likely succeed at taking whatever worked and scaling it back in favor of a new approach. I knew that it would be predictably unpredictable.

So it came as a surprise to me when the members of the band were quoted in a few articles here and there as saying that The Eleventh Hour would be a return to their roots. Many fans were probably pleased by that thought, but it bothered me. I didn’t want a rehash of the first album. They’ve grown up so much as musicians and songwriters since then, and though Jars of Clay was a flawless record, it relied very much on outside talent - programmed drums and strings and things that were being used innovatively at the time, but have become cliché in the six and a half years since then. I loved the straightforward spiritual passion of the first album, but I certainly didn’t want to say goodbye to the lush melancholy moods of Much Afraid or the quirky playfulness of If I Left the Zoo.

Well, I guess in some small way, we all got what we wanted. I’ve been listening to these tracks for almost a month now, and I can definitely detect each era of the Jars’ evolution in their current sound. Critics have said that this is the album Jars of Clay fans have been waiting for - as if to imply that the last two albums were uncool for taking a different approach than the first album. CCM Magazine even went so far as to give this thing an unprecedented five star rating (at least, since they instated their rating system about a year ago). I guess I was surprised - most of these songs are great and all, and this album’s actually taken less time to grow on me than their last two albums have, but I don’t know if it measures up to any of the other three, to tell you the truth.

Anyway, let’s get into the meat of the album. The Eleventh Hour has a definite theme to it, which becomes more apparent after repeated listens. The songs on this album seem to take place in “the last minute”, a dried-out phase of life where Christians feel like their faith is lagging behind and they are running out of time. Many of these songs deal with longing for redemption, regret over past sin, stuff like that - they keep a definite reverence toward God in the midst of their cries for help. The Eleventh Hour is about being in need of change. It’s not as dark and moody as a lot of the stuff on Much Afraid, which will be a relief to some fans who couldn’t get into that album - the desperation remains on a few tracks, but for the most part, it’s been mellowed, perhaps to indicate the complacency that settles in when one feels separated from God for long enough. A few songs seem to deviate from that theme slightly, but still manage to hold their important place in the grand scheme of things. There may not be as many musical or lyrical twists and turns as the past albums contained - which isn’t to say the songs are boring. It simply means that Jars of Clay’s strength this time around lies more in subtlety. And that’s not to say that the album is mellow. There are a few songs that genuinely rock, and most of the mid-tempo material is still very percussive. One noticeable difference is that the electric guitars seem to play a more important role than the acoustic guitars, for perhaps the first time in Jars of Clay’s history.

Well, I’m just going around in circles trying to describe the album overall, so let’s delve into the songs.

Disappear
Getting right into things more urgently than any of their past albums, a steady drum beat and a ringing guitar riff bring in this pleasant, up-tempo plea to a friend who seems to be losing touch with reality. It’s a lot like looking in on the life of the character from “Sad Clown” from the last album. Dan Haseltine’s earnest vocals give a strange sense of joy to this track, as if to convey the freedom this person would feel if only they’d let him in. The track is a bubbly wall of sound, thanks to Charlie Lowell’s keyboards and guitarist Steve Mason’s strong background vocals (this man really should get more time in the spotlight, which is not to say I have anything against Dan; they’re both great). Though it has a definite rock edge, there’s a certain pop magic to it that makes me think Charlie Peacock might have had his hands in the mix somewhere. But no, Jars of Clay wrote and produced this whole thing by themselves. (Unless they hired a drummer and bass player again - Dan can play the drums, but not having seen the album credits, I can’t be sure who handled what). I love the line that closes out the song - “I want to get inside the you you’re hiding from.”
I'd walk into your skin
Swim through your veins
See it from your eyes
I'd really love to try

Something Beautiful
What’s this - a mellow track already? The tune starts out with a very soft touch, as Dan’s vocals break in immediately with some gentle acoustic finger picking underneath. The track flows by rather smoothly, taking on an almost aquatic feel. It’s got strong lyrics - but it’s almost like the song conveys part of the message through its texture. In that sense, it’s not too far removed from the Much Afraid sound. Dan conveys a sense of looking up at God from down below, feeling burdened by the normal state of life, and wanting to be changed into something beautiful. Steve gets a nice guitar break in the middle - not flashy, certainly well-timed. Perhaps the only thing I don’t like about this track is how it misses a beat at the end of each chorus. Still, it’s a nice mix of the acoustic and electric, providing a sense of layering that most popular Christian bands don’t offer these days. It’s nice to know that the electric can be used to something more than just rock out.
If you put your arms around me
Could it change the way I feel?
I guess I let myself believe
That the outside might just bleed its way in

Revolution
Having said that, it is nice to know that Jars of Clay can still rock out when they want to. The quiet, echoing piano that opens this song gives no warning of the feisty track ahead - though it’s not “hard” by any means, it’s got a more raw and abrasive sound than the rest of the album, placing it somewhere in the musical landscape between “Unforgetful You” and “Collide”. Lyrically, Dan’s verses are a bit cryptic, and he sings them in a lower, scratchier tune than usual, before switching into an unbelievably fun chorus - “If you know the words, then try to sing along/When you get the beat, grab a hammer, bang a gong.” Steve Mason and Matt Odmark provide a double guitar attack that is slightly repetitive but very catchy, and the song goes out in terms of having little fun quirks - it’s a very jerky number with a lot of winding down and then cranking back up again. It’s probably the closest the Jars have come to replicating their live sound in the studio - less refined and textured, but a heck of a lot of fun.
Peace takes a taxi to the underground
I want to love the world but I don't know how
I blame it on the DJ playing all the fast songs
Ain't spinning anything that I can sing along

Fly
When I saw the title for this song, I had a brief glimmer of hope that the band’s gorgeous ballad “Fly Farther” (previously released as a demo on The White Elephant Sessions) might have finally made its way on to an album. Even though it would have really killed the momentum of the album so early on, it would have been great to give the song more exposure. Well, “Fly” is a completely different song with a similar title (don’t you hate it when bands do that?), and it’s probably unfair for me to compare the two. Taken on its own, “Fly” is a bit of a normal pop-rock tune, less innovative than the usual Jars of Clay fare. The keyboard and guitar riffs that copy each other are kind of cute, and it maintains a solid beat, but there’s nothing about it that really grabs me. The lyrics seem to be a song of hope, a promise to rescue a loved one from trouble, but they sound kind of vague, almost like another attempt at getting the band onto a soundtrack of some sort. “Crazy Times” never grabbed me as much because it sounded like a more typical rock band than Jars of Clay, and I kind of have the same reaction towards this one.
I saw the host of silent angels waiting on their road
Knowing that all the promises of faith
Come alive when you see home
Hold still and let your hand melt into mine

I Need You
The first radio single from the album had to grow on me. It starts off with a nice acoustic riff, but a few key elements made me think at first that it was a bit of a regression for the band. The song relies heavily on programming, its chord structure is simpler than the usual Jars of Clay fare, and it has the most simplistic chorus the band has written since “I want to fall in love with You”. It bugged me at first to hear Jars of Clay singing, “I need You, I need You, I need You/You’re all I’m living for”, because too many Christian bands these days have written entire albums of stuff like that and they’ve sold like hotcakes simply because cliché worship songs are all the rage these days. Jars of Clay was actually approached by Essential Records at one point to do a worship album, and they politely declined (and thank God!). I have to wonder if this song came out of a brief attempt at this, though. Now, it’s not a bad song at all. The verses are more intriguing than your standard corporate worship fare - even clever in some places. Now that I’m over my initial misgivings, I like it a great deal. I think there might even be a subtle reference back to “Flood” in the line “I fight the wave and feel You lift me up” - almost as if it’s a “retrospective” song for the band. Come to think of it, it does seem like the sort of tune they would have cranked out in a hurry to get something new onto a “best-of” album. (Given how things go these days, we’ll probably be seeing one of those soon, but I digress.) I don’t mean to knock the song in any way; I honestly do love it. But it is the obvious Christian radio single of the bunch, and I suspect fans are going to be tried of it by the time the spring tour rolls around.
I only have a second to spare but
All the time in the world to know you're there
You are the shelter from the rain
And the rain to wash me away

Silence
This is the longest track on the album, at five and a half minutes, and despite its musically repetitive nature, it’s one of the most moving songs on the album. It has a power in its repetition, much like “Frail” from Much Afraid, except that in place of guitars and strings, we have a toy piano sound, sort of like one used in “Sad Clown”, coupled with a slightly static-drenched rhythm that carries throughout the whole song. The keyboards follow a compelling chord cycle, and occasional notes from the electric guitar accentuate Dan’s desperate cries to God at all the right times. Dan seems to have taken a page from Job or Habakkuk or one of those prophets, lamenting the things that he has lost and repeating his question to God - “Where are You?” It’s probably the song that I connect to most deeply on the album - I’ve been through times where God seemed to be ails net, and I know those times were used to make my faith grow. This is the supposed “dark side” of faith that people don’t want to talk about. Though it’s handled in a rather abstract manner, I think the boys have done a beautiful job here.
Scream, deeper I wanna scream
I want you to hear me
I want you to find me
'Cause I, I want to believe
But all I pray is wrong
And all I claim is gone

Scarlet
This seems to be a slightly more electrified version of a something that might have surfaced on Much Afraid - it seems to be a relationship song in the vein of “Tea and Sympathy” or “Portrait of an Apology”. Loping along on a steady 3/4 beat, it may be less lyrically descriptive than either of the above, but what few words it uses are powerful. It seems to deal with a lover who knows that his sins has hurt the one he loves - or perhaps he is hurt by her sins? Either way, he feels the need to promise her, “This old scarlet letter won’t keep me from loving you.” I may be reading my own meaning into it due to my own regret over mistakes made in a past relationship, and hoping that those won’t create trouble in future relationships, but whatever the case may be, it’s a beautiful and haunting song, with a nice percussive break in the middle.
For love I have scaled
The face of these kingdom walls
So let down your hair
Let our kiss make fools of them all

Whatever She Wants
This is probably the darkest “relationship song” that the boys have ever attempted. I would have expected something like this on Kevin Max’s brilliant solo album from last summer. It doesn’t rock as much as “Revolution”, but it’s definitely one of the more aggressive tracks on The Eleventh Hour. Here, Dan is addressing a friend who seems to have given his all to a girl who used him and left him out in the cold. It definitely resonates in a culture where so many people are willing to give up anything - even their convictions - for what they think is true love, only to find out later that their priorities were all wrong. Though God is never explicitly mentioned in the song, I think it’s clear that this is the result of putting a girl above God. I wouldn’t call it an angry woman-hating song by any means - it’s just one example of a common problem among Christians (especially us young, hormone-driven types). Here, the whole technique of skipping a beat works well, as a searing guitar solo breaks in during the bridge. The only thing that really bogs the song down is the overused “Superman” analogy in the second verse.
Never how or why
It worked to play the big lie
To dim the truth from causing her wet eyes

The Eleventh Hour
The title track is a bit plodding - it’s very busy in terms of the guitars, but its beat is a bit too slow and steady. The whole thing feels very methodical and calculated, and maybe it’s meant to give off the feeling of toiling away and having lost your passion for what you’re doing, which is a subtle theme on this album (which is not to say Jars of Clay has lost their passion - rather, they have mentioned rediscovering as they worked on an album for the first time since college without outside help). Lyrics are pretty good here, as Dan once again pleads for some sort of an awakening or rebirth - “Rescue me from hanging on this line/I won’t give up on giving You a chance to blow my mind.” It’s a timely reminder to many of us who live in a very busy world. Charlie’s keyboard refrain actually adds a lot to this piece - his presence isn’t as obvious here as it was on If I Left the Zoo, but when you think about it, his keyboards are a big part of what keeps Jars of Clay from sounding like a lot of ordinary bands.
Take the place of my heart
Until I become a stranger to my life

These Ordinary Days
Every Jars of Clay album seems to have a slower, more acoustic track that doesn’t grab my attention as much. First it was “Blind”, then “Hymn” (which took a while to catch on but is now one of my favorites), then “No One Loves Me Like You”, and now this one. Again, part of the theme to this album is finding God in the sometimes mundane and sometimes hectic nature of everyday life, so I’m sure they purposefully didn’t want to make this track too flashy. Still, its melody isn’t as interesting as most of the other songs, and other than some slight guitar twang, there’s not much to make it stand out from a lot of the acoustic/folk music out there. Its chorus is a bit sleepy - I feel like something about this one was left unfinished. Maybe I just need to listen more closely.
If nothing else, I get to see you
Even if we never speak
All our words, sometimes we don't
Quite know what they really mean

The Edge of Water
The album’s final track is a pleasant surprise. It starts with a monotonous organ note, which for a second brings back unpleasant memories of Radiohead’s “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, but that only lasts through the first verse, where a layer of acoustic guitars gets thrown in to the mix. Then all the other layers come into play, as the drums kick in and the band gloriously brings us home in true folk/rock fashion - even going so far as to throw a banjo into the mix. The lyrics to this song are very interesting - they seem to mourn how we lose our focus on God due to all of the pretty things around us in His creation, and how we long for Him to make Himself visible again and “chase away these shadows”. I love the variations on the old “can’t see the forest for the trees” maxim - “Can’t see the sun for the daylight/Can’t feel Your breath for the wind.” The song fades out on a repeating plea that nicely sums up the record with a glimmer of hope - “When You come back again.”
Do we give up the search and turn out the light
And give up this Holy Ghost that rattles through the night?

Though I’m left feeling like I want more from this album, it’s still a nicely textured collection of songs that flow well together, and do a great job of holding their theme. I can’t really complain about it - none of the songs here are bad, even if not as many catch my attention as the songs on past albums did. The spirit of the first album may be present here, but the sound is different, and fans expecting a rehash of the classics will be as disappointed as they were with the last two albums. Fans who have embraced each new step in the band’s evolution will find a lot to love here. Different fans are going to point to different albums as their best work with each successive release, and the band may never “outgrow” their first album, nor should they - but it’s nice to see their creativity show through in different ways every time. This album is more than adequate to show us that the band’s still got the magic, that being at the forefront of the industry for their entire career hasn’t made them lose the desire to keep tinkering away in the studio, trying to come up with something new, something inspiring… something beautiful.

TRACK REVIEW SUMMARY
Excellent: Silence, Revolution, Disappear
Good: Scarlet, Something Beautiful, The Edge of Water, Fly, I Need You
Decent: Whatever She Wants, The Eleventh Hour, These Ordinary Days
Weak: NONE
Skippable: NONE

Band Members
Dan Haseltine: Lead vocals
Steve Mason: Electric guitars, background vocals
Matt Odmark: Acoustic guitars
Charlie Lowell: Keyboards

Website: http://www.jarsofclay.com

Great Music to Play While: Finishing up that work project or term paper at the last minute.

Recommended: Yes