Jeffrey Overstreet - Looking Closer

The "Most Christian" Movie of the Year?

To all who claim that film critics rejected Left Behind and God's Not Dead and Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas because of their hatred for Christianity... I give you Selma.

To all who get excited at statements like "This was a great year for Christian movies!" and "The Christian movie industry is on the rise!" ... I give you Selma.

Observe...Read more

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Selma (2014): My Review and a Looking Closer Film Forum

Thank God Almighty.

Director Ava Duvernay had a monumental task before her, making a high-profile motion picture focused on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, with a cast of famous names. What's more, the closer the film has come to release, the more the headlines have shown us just how much we need a Great Film about Dr. King's vision.

Even great directors would probably have disappointed us. Think of Spielberg's Lincoln: Hey, I loved it, but I acknowledge that it had weaknesses, just as his Schindler's List did. Or think of far worse examples: Oliver Stone's heavy-handed World Trade Center, for example. When movies speak as directly into current events as this one does, the movie is likely to sound like it represents one side of a partisan debate, like it represents "special interests," or like it's just exploiting our wounds and worries for big-screen thrills.
Not this film.

By choosing intimacy over an epic scale, by going small instead of large, by discernment and selectivity over throwing everything available to her at the screen, Ava Duvernay has surpassed all expectations with a masterfully crafted film that will become a standard by which American historical dramas are measured.
Selma gracefully avoids stumbling into any of the classic biopic ditches. It doesn’t over-glorify its subject; Dr. King is portrayed as a complex, flawed, human character. It marches from beginning to end with remarkable focus, historicity, conscience, beauty, and soul. It never becomes showy. It never becomes heavy-handed. Nor does it shy away from portraying the centrality of Christian faith in this story (I’m looking at you, Unbroken), but bravely models how King’s faith was not an accessory or a badge or a brochure, but a deeply integrated part of his life.

And it is fair.

David Oyewolo seems born for this moment, portraying King with humor, heart, and nuance, showing him to be a man of deep conscience and courage, but also profound doubts and disillusionment. His well-documented infidelities are also acknowledged soberly, in a way that exposes him as a figure of deep flaws and moral failures. But that is the way to go: Tell the truth, and that enhances those moments when he is charged with courage and faith, speaking truth to power.

Coretta King is also more than just the usual Hero's Wife here; her strength, intelligence, and resilience is as crucial as King's eloquence in keeping the fires burning — the fires of the protests against rampant cruelty and illegal prejudice in the South, as well as the fires of her marriage and family (which are the foundation on which King stands). And Carmen Ejogo's performance gives us a complex, nuanced portrait.

Even as Duvernay raises the terrifying specters of George Wallace (Tim Roth, whose restraint here is powerful) and his troops of badge-wearing racists, she avoids exaggeration and refrains from giving them the Iconic Villain treatment. (Wallace's political endeavors for the sake of the poor are even acknowledged.) You have probably heard gripes about discrepancies between the film's portrayal of LBJ (played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson) and what history tells us, and these are worth acknowledging and discussing, but any historical storytelling involves acts of paraphrase, interpretation, and revision. President Johnson was a profoundly complicated and, in some ways, wicked character. While his tactics may have played out a little differently than we are shown here, he is fairly represented as a president whose compromised his integrity in his handling of the South's persecution of African Americans.

Considering the gravity of the situation she's filming, Duvernay's approach to every scene is impressively modest — one might even call her style "gentle." The music acknowledges what is happening, it doesn't announce or insist. The cinematography is attentive, never acrobatic. All of these things work together to draw us in, to get us thinking, to undermine our expectations and give us an unconventionally truthful experience.

Selma is, quite simply, everything I could have hoped for in a film about Dr. King. It is artful, inspiring, perfectly cast and powerfully acted, beautifully shot, scored with sensitivity rather than sentimentality, efficiently edited, and profoundly dignified. I avoid making grandiose claims about movies, especially as the filmmaking industry descends into the hilarious exaggerations and self-importance of Oscar season, but I really don't see any reason not to propose that this is the greatest American-made movie of 2014: for how it serves and conveys the importance of its subject at a time when the world needs reminding, and for how it models that great art is found in moments of deep humanity rather than hysterical sensationalism.

Let it play from screen to shining screen.

And the sooner, the better.

Here are some other responses to the film from critics I respect:

For The National Catholic Register, Steven Greydanus interviewed David Oyelowo and their conversation is fantastic.

And here's a review from Alissa Wilkinson at Christianity Today:

Last week I explored whether our art is up to dealing with the challenges of our times. I suggested that one of the difficulties facing artists is that there's simply more stuff to watch, and so even a great work simply gets seen by fewer people—which means we have fewer common texts to talk about, and fewer works that can move the needle substantially on our national conversations.

Having said all that, I'm going to do something I've only done once before, and also say this: you, Christianity Today reader, need to go see Selma.

See it while it's in the theater (Christmas Day in some markets and January 9 in the rest), and bring some friends or family members. It is a very, very good movie, beautifully shot by Bradford Young (Ain't Them Bodies Saints, A Most Violent Year) and deftly, almost astonishingly well-directed by relative newcomer Ava DuVernay. Its cast is terrific— Oprah Winfrey, Lorraine Toussaint, Common, Wendell Pierce, Keith Stanfield, Colman Domingo, André Holland, and many more, plus Tom Wilkinson as Lyndon B. Johnson and Tim Roth as George Wallace. Carmen Ejogo is steady and heartbreaking as Coretta Scott King, and most importantly, David Oyelowo plays Dr. King himself.

Alissa's interview with David Oyelowo about the filmmaking, King's faith, and Oyelowo's own faith, is also well worth reading.

Brittney Cooper at Salon writes:

There are films that galvanize movements. As I sat, watching “Selma,” I knew this film would be one of them. The first major studio film from the first black woman to win best director at the Sundance Film Festival, “Selma” is action-packed, majestic, funny and soul-wrenching all at the same time. This film that centers ordinary, everyday people, in the place where they lived, doing their work, loving on the leaders they chose, fighting to change the world, is a breath of fresh air to a civil rights narrative that so often lionizes Dr. King, positioning him as savior, as Christ, rather than perhaps as a more human, radical, revolutionary Jesus. I never shy away from the Jesus-King comparisons, because I remain clear that there was Jesus and there was Christ, and King was no Christ. But he loved people, and served them, and died for them.

James Rocchi at The Wrap:

Selma is one of the best American films of the year — and indeed perhaps the best — precisely because it does not simply show what Dr. King did for America in his day; it also wonders explicitly what we have left undone for America in ours. ... Oyelowo’s performance would be impressive enough if it merely recreated the icon we now revere as perfectly as he does through a variety of methods — the cadence of the speeches, the gestures made to the crowd, the political theater of and principled belief in fearlessness and compassion as the only counter to violence and ignorance. But Oyelowo, and Webb’s screenplay, also give us a rich, rewarding portrait of King as a man, one capable of mistakes, self-doubt and hurt. A scene between King and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) where she not only confronts him about his infidelities but also puts them into aching, ruined context is a masterclass in two-person scenework.

Nijla Mumin at indieWire:

This film does more to advance new conversations on the legacy of human rights and the ever-present threat of violence and trauma in black life- something that seems so regular within the racist hierarchies that allow it, but when broadcast across the world and into homes of fellow human beings, becomes grotesque. There is no way to watch this film and not think of Ferguson, of Trayvon walking home, of Renisha McBride, of the severity and sudden violence lurking around corners of black life. Rarely has a film been able to merge an epic dramatic event with social critique, and still make make it human. "Selma" accomplishes this feat. "Selma" is the human narrative.

Scott Foundas in Variety:

A half-century on from Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic voting-rights march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery, director Ava DuVernay revisits those events with startling immediacy, dramatic force and filmmaking verve. ... Bolstered by Paul Webb’s literate, well-researched script and David Oyelowo’s graceful, majestic lead performance, DuVernay has made the kind of movie that gives year-end ‘prestige’ pics a good name.

Stephen Farber in The Hollywood Reporter:

[T]he strength of the film is the sense of proportion that DuVernay demonstrates. In a season of so many bloated, overlong films, this two-hour recounting of a few crucial months in 1965 seems just the right length. Intelligently written, vividly shot, tightly edited and sharply acted, the film represents a rare example of craftsmanship working to produce a deeply moving piece of history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6t7vVTxaic

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Overstreet's Favorite Recordings: 2014 — Part Two [Updated Feb. 2015]

As I said in Part One of my Favorite Recordings of 2014...

Oh, wait. You didn't see that? I recommend you start by reading my long, long list of "runners-up" albums that I enjoyed in 2014. For each one, I've linked to a favorite track or two.

Okay, are we all caught up?

As I said before, I've organized my listening experiences into three categories. You might call them "Good," "Great," and "Greatest" — but that makes me uncomfortable. It takes so much time and attention to have any sense of the greatness in a song or an album.

I'm more comfortable categorizing them like this:

THANK-YOU NOTES

We've covered this.

ENTHUSIASTIC FAN LETTERS

Consider these the silver medalists; the albums I played at least once a month this year; the albums that I bought for the home library on CD or vinyl; the records I recommended with giddy enthusiasm.

And...

TESTIMONIES OF LOVE AND GRATITUDE

Gold medalists: Albums I wanted to hear every week; albums I would be happy to own in a variety of formats; albums I would like to put in the trunk of my car so that I can give them away to everyone I know; albums that made a significant difference in my head and heart this year.

Are you ready?

Time to meet the silver and gold medalists.

Enthusiastic Fan Letters

28.

Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn - Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn

Dear Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn,

Thank you for your banjo love. Thank you for showing us what is possible with instruments that we often underestimate. Thank you for showing us what is possible when two musicians listen closely to one another and then support one another. Abigail, thank you for your sweet, sweet singing. And thank you for your love of tradition, for giving those who came before us the privilege of speaking to us now.

Readers, for the professional review, I'm going to refer you — and not for the last time — to Thom Jurek.

But trust me. Even if you don't like the banjo, I think you're going to love this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGhnLfUvc-k

27.

Jolie Holland - Wine Dark Sea

Dear Jolie,

Be patient with me: I'm beginning to warm to your unusual vocal style, at last. It's your melodies, your lyrics, your musicianship that have kept me listening — that, and the fact that many of my favorite singers challenged me to appreciate new voices and styles over time.

But I'm already head over heels in love with the stormy, abrasive, Marc Ribot-flavored sound of this record. And I'm grateful especially for "On and On," "The Love You Save," and "Waiting for the Sun."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGckxdZWKms

26.

Strand of Oaks - HEAL

Dear Mr. Showalter,

Break-up records are a dime a dozen. But once in a while, somebody wrings something special out of the damage. It happened when Bon Iver created For Emma, Forever Ago. And you made it happen here.

Readers — if you need a reason to pay attention, just read the Wikipedia summary of what led up to this record. It wasn't just a break-up. Timothy Showalter married "his high-school sweetheart," who had an affair while he was on tour. The marriage died. He moved to Pennsylvania, and soon after that his house burned down. "Showalter spent his nights in hotels and on park benches with a borrowed guitar while working at an orthodox Jewish day school." Okay, that's enough material for a record right? Wait He married again, moved to Philadelphia, and then, on Christmas Day two years ago, they "hit a patch of ice" on the road and "crashed into two semi trucks. Showalter suffered a concussion and broke every rib on his right side."

I dislocated a rib once, three years ago. It still hurts at night. I can't imagine what it feels like to have injuries like that.

So, trust me. Break-up records may be common, but this one's worth far more than a dime. I was happy to spend all fifteen bucks. This record is personal, detailed, passionate, a rollercoaster of guitars, and alive with heartbreak and rage and confession and shame and longing and hope.

Thank you especially for these songs: The endearingly autobiographical "Goshen '97." The fiery lament "For Me." And the truly epic and exhilarating "JM."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exSbJDbzsak

25.

Lone Justice - This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983

Dear Maria McKee and company,

Lone Justice was the band of the year for me... back in 1983. And I've been missing you and thinking about what might have been since you broke up in 1986, right in the middle of your meteoric rise, right after my favorite record of yours — Shelter.

I certainly never expected to hear a full, cohesive album from you again, but lo... out of the clear blue! Thanks for the surprise of this record. It sounds fresh and new, even though you assembled it from treasures in the 1983 archives. Maria, you were superhuman — and I believe you still are, so I'm looking forward to whatever you do next.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1SEsctQ0ag

24.

Drive-By Truckers - English Oceans

Dear Drive-By Truckers,

It probably isn't a popular opinion among your fans to call anything released after Jason Isbell's departure "the best." Nevertheless, this is my favorite Truckers record of yours so far. I love the stark, violent, O'Connor-esque storytelling, and the more cohesive sound that is created when you (Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley) take turns on lead vocals.

Hard to narrow it down to a couple of favorites. "Grand Canyon" is an epic closer, but I think I prefer "Primer Coat" for its for its shine, and for that chilling last line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfm1lvLeu2Q

23.

The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream

Dear War on Drugs,

Oh, how I do love these guitars, these grooves, and the generous sprawl of it all. 2014 was lacking in recordings that really let the bands play in an exploratory, leisurely fashion. This felt truly adventurous in the context. I suspect that the extreme enthusiasm in critical circles for this album has something to do with how much we all miss Dire Straits.

So, yes, I love Lost in the Dream. But I'm a little frustrated at how Adam Granduciel's vocals get lost in the mix, making the lyrics almost indecipherable at times (at least when I'm listening in my car). What's more, Charlie Hall's drums sound more automated than live here. Maybe you could try a new producer next time around.

"I'm in my finest hour...." It's a fine hour, yes. I love "Under the Pressure" and "An Ocean In Between the Waves"But I have a feeling there are greater things to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23GdGEzZPvE

22.

Damien Jurado - Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son

Dear Mr. Jurado,

Who says sequels are never better than the original? I like this one better than Maraqopa. You and producer Richard Swift are combustible combination. I don't know how to choose favorites from this mysterious, riddle-riddled, science-fiction record. Nor do I yet understand how to interpret it.

(I understand that, as the reviewer in Slant put it, "Brothers and Sisters zooms out to tell one story, albeit a fantastical, non-linear one cloaked in sci-fi imagery and layers of mystery." But I also agree with this: "The religious overtones are more explicit, too. ... Allegory is everywhere in this dream/vision/hallucination, but it’s not the type of C.S. Lewis allegory in which we’re meant to have an aha moment. Sure, Aslan is Jesus, but I have no clue who Silver Timothy is. Or Silver Donna, Malcom, or Katherine. And don’t count on a big reveal that unlocks a way to understand the veiled “magic number” by the time the album closes. Yet these mysteries are curiously addictive more than they are frustrating.")

I love the sounds. I love your singing. And I enjoy wrestling these mysteries because I love the tremors of deep Gospel resonance sounds that I detect here, the sense hope and renewal that runs throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4sQz6Y5g88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLJr0JFLSjE

21.

Amy Lavere - Runaway's Diary

Amy,

Discovering you was one of the year's most delightful surprises. Runaway's Diary is a lovely, playful, endearing record that benefits from its detailed storytelling, which I understand came from your own recollections of running away from home. But I like imagining these as songs from a stage musical about a plucky girl who runs away and learns life lessons the hard way without losing any of her humor or her sense of mischief.

Also: I think female lead singers who play upright bass on stage are about as cool as it gets.

Nobody sounds like you. Keep singing, and I'll show up. Thank you for your artful storytelling... especially for "Don't Go Yet, John," "Big Sister," and "Last Rock and Roll Boy to Dance."

I would share album tracks with you, but Amy must be keeping them offline. And anyway, you've just got to see what Amy does live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umF6kmgjGE8

20.

Over the Rhine - Blood Oranges in the Snow

Dear Linford and Karin,

Thank you for three great Christmas records (and counting!), and for making each one unique. Thank you also for your "Reality Christmas" lyrics, which help me tear right through the holiday superficiality like a kid tearing through wrapping paper to get to the real gift inside. I love the holy hush of the dark, snowy walks through unsettling parts of town and personal history. Thanks especially for "Another Christmas," "Let It Fall," and "My Father's Body." This one's going to get year-round play at Overstreet Headquarters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haukwn2sBwc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKrxePwY67c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csNuJngFftE

19.

Hurray for the Riff Raff - Small Town Heroes

Dear Alynda Lee Segarra,

I like James Christopher Monger's description of this album — one of the most pleasant surprises of my year — as an "amiable set of millennial-informed, urban crafted, Woody Guthrie-inspired, contemporary hobo-folk anthems that play fast and loose with genre tropes without losing the essence that makes them universal."

The scarcity of Gillian Welch records has given me an appetite, and this record is just what I was looking for. Thank you for your creativity, your sense of composition, and your conscience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEIBQ--GHvQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvA_IjRuJSw

18.

Lucinda Williams - Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone

Dear Lucinda,

I've loved you since Sweet Old World, and I've followed you through so many different albums and sounds. What got into you? A double-album? And one without an ounce of fat on it? Thank you!

Every track is solid, your vocals are darker and stranger and more evocative than ever, and your lyrics are a cohesive collection of straightforward meditations on compassion, empathy, hardship, regret, and love. While I wouldn't say these are your most poetic lyrics, I'm not sure it was poetry you were going for this time around. I think you wanted to bring us together with simpler, more foundational sentiments during a time when we're all feeling fragmented and partisan and aggravated.

And you have the power to do that. I think this may well be your finest hour as a performer with a band. When I put this record on, it's like you and your posse are right here in the room with us, down where my feet meet the hardwood floors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5GvAjqaHbQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnwpXPEgYr4

17.

Sharon Van Etten - Are We There

Dear Sharon Van Etten,

Before, I found your songs to be dark, seductive, and haunting. But these... these are commanding, ferocious, hook-barbed performances about self-destructive compulsions, harrowing relationships, and "I can't quit you" laments. I'd call it the most beautiful feel-bad record of the year. From here on, I'm going to pay close attention.

For what it's worth, I'm particularly averse to the way so many of my gender walk over their wives and girlfriends as if women were inferior beings. I'm encouraged when I hear women who sing like they deserve better, like something dangerous is waking up and making ready to fight back.

Rage on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80-_CpH07QQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyuPWHwZru0

16.

Robert Ellis - The Lights from the Chemical Plant

Dear Robert Ellis,

Every year, it seems I find an out-of-the-blue surprise at year's end, and I wonder what took me so long to discover it. This year, your record is that record.

And "Chemical Plant" would land on my Five Favorite Songs of 2014 Playlist if I got around to making one.

Everyone with a taste for genuine country music seemed high on Sturgill Simpson this year, and I admired that record's rowdy irreverence for the genre, but it never got all the way to my heart like this one does.

And you even get away with a cover of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years" — one that I'm tempted to say I prefer over his original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8-Lx_oW2q0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaOa3MEsHHg

15.

tUnE-yArds - Nikki Nack

Dear Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner,

I'm just going to get this off my chest: If if weren't for Leonard Cohen, I'd say you're guilty of the Ugliest Album Cover of the Year. It looks like a scrap torn off of a Boy George promotional poster from 1983, or something like that. I don't get it.

But the reason this bothers me so much is that I love what's inside that cover so much.

Nikki Nack is wildly creative, energetic, frenzied, busy, and fabulous. I get lost in this record's labyrinthine layers of drum-loopiness. Each wild experiment in Haitian rhythms and hysterical harmonies is like a 10-car pile-up of catchy pop songs. Or, try this: It's an orchard of musical pinatas... and, Merrill, yoiu're running among them blindfolded and swinging a bat with wild, joyous abandon.

"Water Fountain" is the high point, one of my favorite tracks of the year, and "Look Around" is another major high.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbiFcPhccu8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQL1Aeec64A

14.

Hundred Waters - The Moon Rang Like a Bell

Dear Hundred Waters,

I drifted off into your surreal, beautiful, and sometimes disturbing soundscapes over and over again this year. In the car, in the coffee shops, and in the dark.

I love how sumptuous this record is with Radiohead-y and Bjork-y textures that summon images of moonlit-lakes and ice caves. Nicole Miglis, your vocals are positively shivery, your harmonies are exquisite, and your soulful, strange lyrics keep me guessing.

Also: This is a fantastic headphones experience. Kudos to producer Trayer Tryon.

This will be long-term writing-soundtrack music for me. My favorite dreamscape of the year. Thank you especially "Broken Blue" and "Down from the Rafters."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhUckSJOVY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaNfKrebEqc

13.

Leonard Cohen - Popular Problems

Dear Leonard,

What in the world? Help me understand this album cover. Seriously. I can't stand looking at it. You're a distinguished-looking fellow — no complaint there. But... ugh.

No disrespect, sir — you keep company with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, among the reigning lyricists in all of popular music. And this time you took the time for the kind of music and orchestration that your lyrics. By my lights, this is easily your most interesting collection of songs since Ten New Songs.

I also love how your voice continues to evolve into something more textured and interesting all the time. You really growl and snarl and rasp your way through this record, and I like it. I like it a lot.

I really should take the time to dig deep into these lyrics, but if I start, I'll write pages and pages. Better to let listeners hear them the way that they were meant to be heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVegcCcMNS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwcJQIyNZQM

12.

TV On the Radio - Seeds

I came to this record late, and found it (contrary to reviews I'd read) to be the most engaging, joyous effort yet from one of America's strongest, most imaginative rock bands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaKVy-FlaUA

•

Testimonials of Love and Gratitude: The Top Ten

11.

Robert Plant - lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar

Dear Robert Plant,

What a massive album you've produced here. In the last seven years, you've turned into a magician, showing up with surprise after surprise. First, Raising Sand, then Band of Joy, then rumors of "eloping" with a certain famous folk and Americana singer, and now this... a tale of heartbreak, orchestrated by a new band called the Sensational Space Shifters.

Your vocals have become more restrained and refined from his experiences with Allison Krauss, Patti Griffin, and the Band of Joy. It gives you more range and nuance. And the musical styles are a whirlwind fusion of Americana, Irish fiddle tunes, African rhythms, and New Age atmospherics. There are a lot of U2 sounds going on here, actually, with occasional left turns into trashy Tom Waits rhythms.

But the spiritual restlessness, the mythological references, the wisdom born of a lifetime on the road... these are chapters in a book that's unmistakably your own.

You've sung a lot of songs about love and heartbreak, but there's a particular urgency this time in how you sing about the end of a great love, and about a burdensome sense that your search for that perfect, lasting love maybe running out. But then you also sing about a deepening faith that "there is somebody there" — somebody who gives you hope and consolation. For somebody who has lived as colorfully as you have — superstardom, relationship breakdowns, personal tragedy, it's a remarkable thing to hear persuasive professions of faith in a Comforter.

Lullaby sounds like an album from the Robert Plant of the future — and that's exciting. Usually, artists of your stature are reaching back to capture something of their past glory. But you seem like a a giant striding over the horizon, and I am more than happy to follow.

This record sounds great under headphones, by the way — and hugely resonant on the home speakers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlEJeZcvK4g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3h7KdJKEIM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeFy87atItM

10.

Warpaint - Warpaint

Dear Warpaint,

I really don't know how to write about your sound.

Woozy with grooves. Groovy with moves. Seductive and spectacularly spacious.

I don't know. I just know that I have a crush on your sound. I feel about your sound the way I felt about my dreamgirl in high school. I want to follow this sound around and get high on its perfume. If I'm listening to this record in the car, I'm likely to sail right on past my destination and forget where I'd been going just to live in the world these sounds create.

Listening to this self-titled record on a road trip, I suddenly started ranting. (Poor Anne, who had to listen to it, will testify that this is true). I said pretty much this:

"Why can't the great bands of the '80s and '90s rediscover the joys of exploring soundscapes again? Why do they seem compelled to try and relive past glories when they could be conquering new worlds? This... this is the most exploratory album I've heard in many months. It has the edge of early Sinead O'Connor, the dark magic of Kate Bush or Siouxie and the Banshees, the layered rhythms and percussive genius of Radiohead, and something like the spirit-world sequences in Twin Peaks. And it hast this extraordinary patience about it — it lets the songs slowly bloom into really entrancing stuff. If, say, U2 rediscovered curiosity and paired up with somebody like Radiohead's Nigel Godrich or that producer who made so much of Zooropa — Flood — they could really become adventurous and interesting again."

Then I got home and looked up information on your new album, and... lo! This album was co-produced by producer Nigel Godrich and U2's producer Flood!

What can I say? I am on your wavelength. Follow this road. Keep going. Don't look back.

I am your crazy fanboy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uol4GEX1DTU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60NTacXTgsA

St. Vincent - St Vincent

Dear Annie Clark,

While this isn't my favorite record of yours (not yet, anyway) — that'd be a toss-up between Actor and Strange Mercy — I am so glad that I'm living here and now to see you grow and evolve into something the music world has never seen: a woman who sings, writes songs, plays guitar, innovates, and performs in ways that surpass her peers and make her the most exciting figure in music.

On this self-titled record, you prove once again that you're not only one of the world's greatest guitarists, but one of the world's most provocative lyricists, and most commanding performers. Earning every comparison to David Bowie and David Byrne that music reviewers have given you, you have created something unexpected here — a pristine, clear, and chilly science fiction world that cautions us, through slight exaggeration, about the dehumanizing effects of technology. But I love the irony in how you do that: By taking the oh-so-human idiosyncrasies of your talents and running them through technology. The synthesizers here sound soulful. The buzz guitars sounds eloquent and emotional.

And then, having shown up the machines, you break out with a passionate mid-80s-Madonna anthem about how you prefer the personal, the maternal, to the institutionalized love of a stained-glass father figure: "I prefer your love to Jesus." Provocative, sure. But I'm not taking this song as a cheap shot at church. I hear you declaring a deeply human need for intimacy, for hands-on relationships, for familial love. And that's powerfully ironic, because what the singer in your song is craving is just the kind of love that Jesus asked us to show one another. And in my experience, it's all too often that we point automatically toward Jesus while demonstrating very little of the love that he tried to teach us to share, the love that many would say has changed their lives.

Anyway, I'm on a tangent.

Thank you for this beautiful monster of a record.

I prefer your music to "Christian music."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVAxUMuhz98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAdARF4rGcQ

Steve Taylor and the Perfect Foil - Goliath

Dear Steve,

I confess, I've been hoping that you'd return to rock. Then I gave up hoping. You seemed set on new career paths, like being a producer for Newsboys and Sixpence None the Richer — thank you, by the way, for Sixpence — and then turning left to become a film director.

Then, out of the blue, you announced that you'd put together a new band called The Perfect Foil, and, with the help of some Kickstarter support, and that you'd offer us an album soon. The Kickstarter campaign blasted beyond your expectations. And the rest is some pretty sweet history.

Now we have Goliath, and I think it's the peak of your creative endeavors. Goliath is a strong, searing rock record with some of your sharpest writing. That finale called “Comedian” — my favorite song of 2014 — is, I would argue, the most subversive, serrated, spectacular song of your career. (I've already heard a complaint that "Comedian" sounds a little too much like a song by The National, but hey... when I first heard The National I thought that they sounded a little bit like you... and you've sounded like that since the early '80s!)

Everything I've ever loved about your lyrics is here. In retrospect, I think you found your truest musical self when you recorded "Jim Morrison's Grave" in the late '80s, and this is a refinement of that glorious noise. The musical energy I loved in the best moments of I Predict 1990 and Chagall Guevara is here. It's hard to believe, but you sound like no time has passed at all. You've jumped right back into the saddle sounding supremely confident.

And this does not sound like a band's first album to me. It sounds like a band that's waited a long, long time to be turned loose to do what they do best. I've been blasting it in the car on my commutes this week and my appetite for another round seems to increase with each listen. I love the ambition in "Comedian," I love "Sympathy Vote"'s snarky rhymes, I love "Happy-Go-Lazy" for being funny and for being the catchiest song I've heard all year. It's not a reinvention — thank God. It's the next strong step in a journey that went from "I Want to Be a Clone" to "Jim Morrison's Grave" to "Take Me to Love Canal" to "Smug."

And yet, for all of your creative achievements, you don't seem smug at all. You sound grateful, giddy, and full of new ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pgyvfNEC7s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vh_zMKzIZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6h0KZ6WXk0

My Brightest Diamond - This Is My Hand

My Brightest Diamond - None More Than You (EP)

When I first started listening to your music, Shara Worden, I knew that My Brightest Diamond was something special. You were chasing your own muse through worlds that I suspected I'd find on the same musical continent as those wild, imaginative regions called "Annie Clark," "Bjork," and "Kate Bush."

But — forgive me if I'm being presumptuous — I had a sense that you hadn't really found That Record, That Sound, the spot in which you could pick up the strong signals you'd been searching for, the soil where you would put down roots and grow into the oak tree that you seemed likely to become.

Then came an EP called None More Than You.

And hard on the heels of that came a full record: This Is My Hand.

And what can I say? Introducing... MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND. This is a big moment for a great imagination. "Pressure," in particular, sounds like the very thing you're singing about — one of those jewels of great price born out of a lot of hard work.

I listen to these records a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CePpTXIuQzY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb5IjCNevhI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peUDPmp_5O4

D'Angelo - Black Messiah

Dear D'Angelo,

Check back in a month or two, and this album may have ascended further up the list. It's still fresh out of the oven, and thus it's too early for me to say much about it.

And, frankly, I'm brand-new to your music altogether. When your first album in 14 years arrived by surprise, the rush of excitement among some of the listeners I respect most intrigued me. I must not have been paying attention to the right reviewers 14 years ago; I didn't pick up on what you were up to back then. (Granted, my musical interests have expanded into a wider range of styles since then.)

But right away I was captivated by the complexity, creativity, and substance of what you've accomplished here. It arrives at just the right time — as our culture seems increasingly at war with itself, and needs to marinate on lyrics like these, lyrics that turn us inward, so that the change starts with us.

And it also delivers what is arguably the years most groundbreaking soundscape of 2014. My first thought was "These are the sorts of sounds Prince might be making today if he'd kept up the momentum of imagination and genre fusion he demonstrated in the '80s." More than any other record I've heard this year, this created an entire world of its own — psychedelic and improvisational without ever losing focus or purposefulness. The rhythms, the lyrics, the harmonies in the first three tracks won me over so quickly and completely that I'll be diving both forward and backward (14 years backward) now.

Thanks for coming back at last so I could celebrate the comeback by hearing you you for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo3RAH0zLlU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2r5yqjlVrI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ6ADCTmaNA

U2 - Songs of Innocence

U2 are busy right now, so I'm not writing this one directly to them. I'm playing this one straight.

Plenty of folks will dismiss my entire list and say I'm blowing my credibility entirely for including this one. (One guy even promised to do so.)

But what can I say? I love these sounds. I love these performances. I love these songs.

And let's face it — 99.9% of the objections I've heard to this album have had to do with something other than the songs themselves. And I'm not interested in dwelling on anything but the music itself. In time, the cynics and celebrities who jumped on the Bash the Famous Rock Stars bandwagon are going to be reduced to an amusing historical footnote.

There was no record this year that I sang along with more than this one, no batch of songs that spoke so directly to my own convictions, questions, and experiences. And I didn't hear a single record this year that pulled together such a wide variety of styles into a program that felt cohesive.

When it comes to bands that have made a difference in my life, Over the Rhine's records mean the most to me, but where Over the Rhine has been part of my personal soundtrack for 20 years, U2 has been part of that soundtrack for 30 years, and they were hugely influential to me during the most identity-forming years of my life (high school and college). So I'm well aware that I listen to this band differently — their sounds evoke memories and personal history like nothing else does.

That doesn't mean I give them a pass on quality. Far from it. I've been frustrated with their past several albums for a variety of reasons. I have frustrations with this one too, but this is the first album since Pop during which aggravations don't disrupt my experience. Every piece seems to fit, every song feels like a chapter in the unfolding of a grand story. And while U2 became legendary by looking outward and singing about "the troubles" of the world, I've always found that their strongest songs are the personal ones, the songs that seem to have been unearthed from the ground beneath their feet, or surgically exposed in their hearts and guts. And this is an album about their life stories: their hallelujahs, their horrors, their hopes.

My main disappointment with it is not about the production or any sense of eagerness to please their fans (that was my primary compliant on No Line on the Horizon). It isn't about forgettable or predictable songs. (That was my complaint for some of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.) It isn't about half-baked lyrics or sequencing. (That was my problem with All That You Can't Leave Behind.) My biggest disappointment is that these songs are wound so tight that it feels more like a Bono album than a U2 album; the stretches of pure music are fleeting when they come at all. And as a result, the record is full of strong songs that never rise to the level of "epic" like "With or Without You" or "Please" or "Acrobat" or "Love is Blindness" or "Where the Streets Have No Name." But I'm okay with that: U2 has done a lot of epic. They've been very clear about the fact that this was an album about singable songs, about melodies that were built to last.

Of course, as a huge fan of Pop, Zooropa, and even Rattle and Hum, I will earn scorn from plenty of U2 fans. What can I say? Music is a personal thing.

This record testifies that a band entering its fifth decade (!!) is still striving for excellence, innovation, transformation, and revelation. They're doing what Beatles fans dream that the Beatles would be doing today if they were still together. You know what? If the Beatles were recording fantastic music today, they'd be scorned, mocked, hated, vandalized, and treated like the unwanted guest at a party. Forget about that. It's about the music.

I'll be there on the first weekend of U2's upcoming tour, and I won't be there out of nostalgia, hoping they play the hits: Frankly, I'll be dreaming of hearing new sounds, new ideas. Knowing U2, I'm unlikely to be disappointed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ9xg2MXe50

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLhtPtR4IQk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF0rKW1DEMo

Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band - Landmarks

Dear Brian Blade,

Let me say this up front: I don't know how to write about jazz.

I'll let my friend Thom Jurek give the professional's review of this record.

But there is a redeeming warmth and a deep soulfulness in this record. I don't know how to describe it, but I feel the Holy Spirit when I listen to it. It slows me down. It tunes me up. It restores my adrenalin, my heartbeat, my concentration to healthy human levels.

I listen to it a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWhrmXU_DBM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckEYIMNWkXQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP61ln8KnZE

Luluc - Passerby

Thank you, Zoë Randell, for your lyrics and your sweet, beautiful voice. Thank you, Steve Hassett, for the elegance, emotion, and restraint in your musicianship.

Stories of loss. Stories of searching. Stories of hope.
For me, it’s the second or third — or tenth — listen to an album that sometimes wins me over. On a Sunday morning, driving in the morning sunshine with Anne, listening to Luluc’s Passerby for about the fourth time, I suddenly fell madly in love with this record.

This seems to be quiet music. But I learned that I need to turn it up. I need to turn it up really loud. That's when it reveals itself. It's so full of wonderful textures and details. It's a gorgeous, cohesive, poetic record, and I think that fans of Over the Rhine’s Drunkard’s Prayer and The Innocence Mission’s Birds of My Neighborhood will really appreciate it.

I've listened to this more than any other record this year, because I needed music about loss. I needed beauty. I needed hope. The closer I listened, the more I heard.

I listen to this a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl4WOY15_nA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFWw75PY4V4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83VTJHWRdZg

Elbow - The Take Off and Landing of Everything

Dear Elbow,

Every new record you release is better than the last. And this is your finest yet.

My friend Josh Hurst, upon hearing this album for the first time, wrote, "The record unfolds patiently and organically, taking its time for the hooks and the emotions to sink in. These guys can write killer singles, but they've been doing that for so long that it's nice to hear them pour so much passion into something more contemplative and serene." I couldn't agree more.

This is your most mature, nuanced, literary, substantial piece of work. Your gorgeous compositions patiently set the stage for Guy Garvey, who sings with more soul and grace and control than ever. You are a band completely in touch with your muses, performing at the level that fans of supergroups always hope their bands will reach.

When I first heard this record, I hadn't yet been surprised by U2's Songs of Innocence yet, so this is what I wrote (somewhat snarkily):

"It's a bittersweet experience, hearing this and pondering the possibilities of roads that bands like U2 and Coldplay could have taken... could still take. I don't mean I want them to sound like Elbow. I just mean this: U2 and Coldplay have shown themselves capable of crafting substantial music, but the drive to make hits, to dazzle their audiences, to Be Important has prevented them from making much built-to-last work in recent years. I think I'll still be listening to this one a decade from now. This is one to carry with you."

Then, of course, U2 turned around and delivered a surprisingly strong record. But still... but still... The Take Off and Landing of Everything is a record that does not sound calculated to impress. It sounds like the work of artists who are following their questions, making new discoveries, and releasing what has built up in their oversized hearts.

And that's why I listen to it a lot. And why I will go on listening to this album more than any other band album of 2014.

And hey, readers! If you want to listen to the whole album, well... this is your lucky day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipaDJq7XCSM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqnIbueM5fE

Joe Henry - Invisible Hour

It wasn't peace I wanted,
So it wasn't peace I found.
I wouldn't stand for reason,
And it never would sit down.
The bird upon my shoulder
Has not one kind thing to say.
My eye is on the sparrow,
But she looks the other way...

Dear Joe Henry,

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. Or, better, a bird on your shoulder. I'd have had many kind things to say.

Just to be there in that room — your home studio — from July 24-31, when it all unfolded: When you started into the Invisible Hour sessions with your guitar, with Jay Bellerose on drums, Jennifer Condos on bass, your son Levon with his clarinets and saxophones, and the rest of your collaborators: Greg Leisz, David Piltch, John Smith, Lisa Hannigan, and The Milk Carton Kids.

I hear Jay's drums like waves rolling in on an easy tide, sometimes sighing and sometimes crashing; I hear Levon's horns flashing like sparks and leaping like campfire flames; I hear Jennifer's bass lines sturdily arranged as kindling for the fire. And you all sing with such beautiful harmonies. But above all, there is a quality of listening in this record, something I rarely notice in recordings. I think anyone will notice it if they turn it up: they'll feel just how closely each one of you is tuning in to what everyone else is doing. They'll feel the combined attentiveness in that room, the way every instrument and every lifts up the others, giving just enough to play a vital role without stealing the show.

And there your lyrics have never been wiser, never been more poetic, never been more rewarding to attention.

I love the themes that weave it all into a tapestry: The importance of seeing the Kingdom of God spread out before us now, rather than excusing ourselves from attention and accountability by determining that God's Kingdom is something Elsewhere, some world to which we have no access, some place that must be earned or wearily and begrudgingly awaited.

I love how this album finds relationships to be the place within which we find that kingdom, in spite of their troubles — because of their troubles.

I love this:

Then, foolish we are, in the presence of God
And what all his [her] grave angels have done—
In love’s growling weather, if we’re dreaming together
Of a heaven apart from this one…
Apart from our own

I take this to be holy—
If futile, uncertain and dire:
Our union of fracture, our dread everlasting,
This beautiful, desperate desire.

Indeed. Foolish we are if we do not live as if heaven is offered to us here and now, as if we are not partly responsible for making it real.

I love the epic story told in "Sign" of loss, of loneliness, of striving and striving, of deep regret and longing for those missed opportunities for love and grace.

I love this:

He who cannot be seduced cannot be saved…
I hang ready to be swayed.

For a lot of people, this album will be deemed "too difficult." It isn't out to flatter them, to insist on itself by shouting through the noise. It waits for those who are curious, who listen closely, who will receive its blessings by allowing themselves to be slowly seduced.

The truth, after all, must dazzle gradually. I've been listening to this album all year, and sometimes I am too impatient, and I've allowed too much clamor into my mind to pay attention and lie down beside these quiet waters, to let my soul be restored. But sometimes I'm seduced, and these dry bones are knit back together.

I love this:

No one you can name
Is just that one thing they have shown,
You speak from the shadows
And I want you to lead me on.

Is there any theme that means more to me in music, in art, in living, than the sense that there is a still, small voice on the edges of things inviting us into a relationship, into a journey? As Sam Phillips once sang, "Burning light inside my dreams / I wake up in the dark / The light is outside my door / Love is everywhere I go..." The light is always with me; the light is always unwilling to leave me where I am; it is always asking me to move, to grow, to discover, to live. If I am truly married to my wife, truly loving to my friends and neighbors and — most importantly, perhaps — enemies, then I will remember that none of them are "just that one thing they have shown." I will remember to humble myself and learn more about them, learn from them, and allow them to lead me on.

I also love this:

After every sorrow comes a joy,
But every howl hides one more
This may challenge all our senses,
Hold us tight within its fences—
But singing out, her gate stands open,
For all the world, so weak and broken,
A story giving all a framing,
A face that waits but for a naming…

Isn't that what we want to believe? Isn't that wanting evidence enough that joy is possible, that the invitation has been made, that redemption is here?

I love this:

We roll and tumble,
Rattle, shake, and hum —
We’re dying to be other
But we kill not to become.

Oh, how I have been praying for change and transformation. Oh, how I've been kicking against anything that might invite me to be challenged, and thus changed and transformed. How we all invest everything in order to build walls against change, suffering, death. Oh how we long for that very same fall into grace.

Readers — find me lyrics more beautifully written, or a band more gracefully in tune with one another, or the power of restraint more powerfully employed, or textures more richly and deeply layered. Each song is a path up a mountain, requiring some work and attention, and rewarding that with different revelations depending on the day, the time, the circumstances, the listener. These are lines that are powerful when read aloud without the music, but they shine when sung to this music the way agates shine in glittering tidepools. Even here, now, by spelling them out for you without the context of the music, I am taking translucent, colorful, beautiful agates from the tidepools and bringing them back to the house where they lose much of their magic and ministry.

Joe, I take all of this to be holy. Uncertain. And holy.

Thank you for inviting us to listen closely.

"Lead Me On"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyrIok2OTR8

"Sign" (from the album):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRp1w8Zqr4g

"Swayed" (a solo version, live at KEXP)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRZcjwvYMiE

And speaking of listening closely...

Readers... since you've been paying close attention, I want you to be the first to know: I will go on doing this in 2015 — bringing lyrics and intuitions to your attention, and engaging in the impossible art of writing about music ("dancing about architecture") — in a new column at the website called Christ and Pop Culture. I hope you'll meet me there, in the good company of Richard Clark, Alan Noble, and other fine contributors.

Thanks for making this journey with me.

Happy New Year!

P.S.

One more song.

It seems appropriate to wrap up this celebration of 2015 with my favorite Closing Credits track of the year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H22fZWySJ50

by Jeffrey Overstreet

2014: Overstreet's Favorite Films

This year's Favorite Films list accomplishes several things for me:

It reminds me that — for a variety of reasons (including the fact that I'm working full-time and going to school, and the fact that Seattle is getting major releases much later than New York and Los Angeles) — I have not yet found opportunities to see many of the best-reviewed films of 2014.

A few of the films I am still eager to see include National Gallery, Episode of the Sea, Norte (The End of History), Closed Curtain, Coherence, and Actress... for starters.

It convinces me that, unless I am head-over-heels about some of the films I have yet to see, this was a strange and disappointing year at the cinema, with a lot of "good" and very, very little "great."

This is a strong candidate for the weirdest year-end list of my lifetime so far. The top five alone are quite a bizarre mix, and the #1 film is one that hardly anybody has seen (although it is available for streaming on Fandor).

The things that interest me at the movies have changed so much over the past 30 years, leading me into stranger territories and an increasing variety of styles and genres, that I have fewer and fewer films I can recommend with confidence to a general audience. Some of them would require a good deal of explanation to a moviegoer who only goes to movies that star familiar names and play at the local cineplex.

That's not a bad thing; it's just ... interesting.

It goes to show that our encounters with art are personal and distinct. I can't guarantee my interests will lead you to "a good time at the movies." But I can promise you that each one of these movies has stayed on my mind for a variety of reasons, offering us a great deal to appreciate and discuss. And if you have a hard time figuring out what's worthwhile about any one of them, feel free to ask me! I'll suggest some lenses to look through, some questions to ask, some ways to appreciate them.

It gives me tremendous hope for the future of commercial American cinema that something like The LEGO Movie can pack so many surprises and ideas that it ends up a strong contender for my #1 spot, within shouting distance of a work of creative genius like The Strange Little Cat. If we're open to it, we might discover greatness anywhere.

•

PLEASE NOTE: I will revise this list in the next few months as I catch up with as some significant 2014 films that did not play in Seattle, or that played so briefly that I missed them.

•

A NOTE OF THANKS: Many of the reviews that I wrote and published this year would not have been possible without the donations from readers who enabled me to see some of these films, and to carve out the time and resources necessary to blog about them. You made it possible for me to turn my moviegoing into writing. And your votes of confidence are more encouraging to me than I can express.

Okay, here we go. For this first-draft version of the list, I'll count them down in 30 trailers...Read more

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Overstreet's Favorite Recordings: 2014 — Part One

Overdoing it? Yes. As long as War & Peace? Yes. But here it comes anyway: The list of my favorite recordings of 2014.

I look forward to this every year. I started making "Favorite Music of the Year" lists when I was about 12 years old. I never dreamed that I would still be making those lists three decades later. And I certainly never dreamed that I'd be publishing them, or that I'd be reviewing music (or movies, for that matter) for responsive readers.

But here I am, at my favorite cafe, with my favorite meal from their menu, and a glass of my favorite beverage, so that I can make a celebration out of this event: The Gratitude Party.

There's too much new music in the world on any given year for me to presume to claim knowledge of what the "Best Music of the Year" might have been. But I can tell you what impressed me. What songs stuck with me, what made me go back for seconds and thirds and fifteenths. I can tell you what made me feel gratitude — whether for the lyrics, the energy, the invention, the musicianship.

This year, I've been grateful for so much good music that I really don't know how to wrap things up. So I've organized my experiences into three categories. You might call them "Good," "Great," and "Greatest" — but that makes me uncomfortable. It takes so much time and attention to have any sense of the greatness in a song or an album. I'm more comfortable categorizing them like this:

THANK-YOU NOTES

Consider these the bronze medalists; the runners-up; the albums I enjoyed, played several times, and recommended; the mp3s I'm glad I downloaded.

ENTHUSIASTIC FAN LETTERS

TESTIMONIES OF LOVE AND GRATITUDE

Seems like a lot of trouble over a bunch of music, doesn't it? But that's how much I love music. I hope you find some new discoveries among these recommendations and expressions of gratitude.

Are you ready? Here we go with Part One...

My Thank-You Notes

(listed alphabetically by artist)

Agents of Future - Ballistic Mystery

Thank you for singing your guts out. Thank you for finally delivering a full-length record, after so many years of amazing Sunday morning live events. And thanks for "Least o'These."

"Oh Lord, create in me a heart that beats down doors / Until all of the open, open sores / Are healed like they were never there."

Antlers - Familiars

Thank you for the beautiful horns, and for lyrics as lovely as these:

"Then when heaven has a line around the corner,
we shouldn’t have to wait around and hope to get in
if we can carpenter a home in our heart right now
and carve a palace from within..."

Thank you for "Palace."

Beck - Morning Phase

Thank you for this album-length acknowledgment that Sea Change really is your masterpiece, and that there was more where that came from. Thanks especially for "Turn Away."

The Black Keys - Turn Blue

Thank you for letting songs sprawl, stretch, and go on opening up. Thanks for guitar solos in a year where they were hard to come by. Think you could persuade U2 to go back to writing songs as epic as "The Weight of Love"?

Broken Bells - After the Disco

Thank you for keeping alive what was best about early '80s pop. The title track makes me 14 all over again, dancing around my bedroom.

Bruce Springsteen - High Hopes

Thanks, Master Springsteen, for your restlessness, for not giving up on the Big Music, and for this:

Now pray for yourself and that you may not fall
When the hour of deliverance comes on us all
When our hope and faith and courage and trust
Can rise or vanish like dust into dust
Now there's a kingdom of love waiting to be reclaimed
I am the Hunter of Invisible Game.

The Bruised Hearts Revue - As Bright As It Burns

Thanks for taking such heartfelt, hopeful music to the streets. Thanks, Knathan Ryan, for staying true to your talents from one chapter to the next. And thanks for "Like a Long Lost Friend."

Conor Oberst - Upside Down Mountain

Thanks for the strongest musicianship and writing of your career so far — especially "Artifact #1."

This world is full of missing persons
All of these unsolved mysteries
If someone says they know for certain
They're selling something certainly

So when I set myself to wonder
All the questions that remain
The only one that even matters
Is when I'll see you're face again

I keep looking back for artifacts
To prove that you were here
The sound that's been keeps echoing
It never disappears

First Aid Kit - Stay Gold

Thanks for "Heaven Knows", which I turn up very, very loud when it plays during my commute, and which makes the day sunnier as a result.

The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger - Midnight Sun

Thanks for bringing the name "Lennon" back to the front lines of art rock with a sound that — while it nods respectfully to the Beatles here and there, as much to George Harrison as to your father — is really all your own, Sean Lennon. I particularly like "Devil You Know."

Grouper - Ruins

Thank you for an enthrallingly quiet, textured, rainy-day album that helped me untie all of the knots of the hard days. Thank you for making us lean forward and listen closely. Thanks for "Clearing."

Hiss Golden Messenger - Bad Debt and Lateness of Dancers

Thanks, Mr. Messenger, for the strangest one-two punch of the year. I like the lyrics on Lateness of Dancers better, but I like the intimacy and tenderness of Bad Debt, so I can't really pick a favorite here. Thanks for the blues of "Bad Debt" and the contagious playfulness of "Lucia."

The Hold Steady - Teeth Dreams

I've admired you guys all along the way, but this was your strongest effort in a while, and I'm grateful for your latest epic: "Oaks."

Jack White - Lazaretto

Thanks for being the brilliant mash-up of Edward Scissorhands, Robert Plant, Nikola Tesla, and Jerry Lee Lewis that you are. Thanks for the hooks. Thanks for "That Black Bat Licorice."

Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence

I must admit — this album's lyrics made me worry about you. This is a deeply disturbing record. And yet, you've made some lush, haunting, David-Lynchian beauty out of some terrible things. I'm particularly grateful for "Shades of Cool." But hey, take care out there, Lana Del Rey. I want to someday hear you sing from a place less despairing. I'd like to hear your version of what joy sounds like.

Lost in the Trees - Past Life

Thank you for this surprising turn in your sound. And for "Upstairs," which is one of the songs I played most this year.

Loudon Wainwright - Haven't Got the Blues Yet

I'm not sure why this album didn't get more attention this year. I loved the whole crazy thing. Wild, crazy, hilarious, sick, and twisted. I don't know where to start. But in a year devastated by gun violence, in which gun-enthusiasts kept insisting that the guns aren't really a problem, a song like this one is a necessary jab.

Mary Gauthier - Trouble & Love

Thank you for your masterful songwriting once again, Mary. I'm especially grateful for "Worthy" — easily one of my favorite tracks of the year. I could say the same thing about "Oh Soul."

Neneh Cherry - Blank Project

Thank you for a long overdue return, Neneh Cherry! I've missed you. Thank you for turning my commute to and from work into an adrenalin rush with the incredible beats that dominate this record, and for the raw and compelling storytelling and confessions in songs like "Dossier."

Nickel Creek - A Dotted Line

I'm very, very late to your music, Nickel Creek. But this record was a hoot and a half. I loved all of the instrumental. I loved your cover of Sam Phillips's "Where Is Love Now?" But I'm most grateful for this song: "Christmas Eve," (I'm sharing a live version, because you seem to have kept your fans from posting album tracks. But I love the pristine production on the album version.)

The Notwist - Close to the Glass

Thanks for one of the most surprisingly unpredictable records of the year, and especially for these two tracks, which I turned up very loud during a particularly beautiful stretch of a road trip in Montana: "Run Run Run" and "Lineri."

Phox - Phox

Thanks, Phox, for a fantastic debut record. You get my vote for Best New Band in 2014. Thanks especially for "Noble Heart."

Prince - Art Official Age
and
Prince & 3RDEYEGIRL - Plectrumelectrum

One of the biggest flash-back-and-flash-forward parties of this year: Your return to the glory we, your longtime fans, remember. We knew you were still capable of this. And this two-album comeback was barrels of fun. Thanks especially for "Wow" — but since I can't find a link online, thanks also for "Plectrum Electrum," and for "FUNKNROLL."

Rodrigo Y Gabriela - 9 Dead Alive

When I needed to blast a gray day open into vivid colors, all I needed to do was put this record on. So thanks for that. Thanks especially for "Misty Moses" and "Fram," both of which blow my mind. Well, actually, just about all of these performances blow my mind.

The Secret Sisters - Put the Needle Down

This was the year that three powerhouse female duos dazzled me: First Aid Kit, Lily and Madeleine, and my favorite — you two Secret Sisters. It was the involvement of T Bone Burnett that got my attention, but the record needs no celebrity endorsement. The whole thing's a blast, sharp as a switchblade. But I'm particularly grateful for this surprising cover of PJ Harvey's "The Pocket Knife."

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - Give the People What They Want

Thank you for "Retreat!" It's so good to know that sounds like this are still going on in the world. I won't be surprised if this shows up on an upcoming Quentin Tarantino soundtrack.

Sinead O'Connor - I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss

Even more impressive than Prince's comeback records, Sinead O'Connor's comeback album is exactly the kind of ferocious performance I've been hoping we'd hear from her again. There's a lot going on in this record. Thanks so much for the irresistible refrain of "Take Me to Church" — which is, in my opinion, so far superior to the other 2014 song with that title — and the fires that you set during "Harbour." Oh, how I've missed this side of you!

Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso

At first, I thought, "I like this for the same reasons that I like Feist." The playful vocals, the clever lyrics, the irresistible dance beats. But then I became more and more enamored of the soundscapes you create here. Who knew that "Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" would make a pop-music comeback?When it comes to fun, this record ruled 2014. Thanks especially for "Coffee" and "H.S.K.T."

Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

One voice says, "This is the kind of genius that Thom Yorke can compose in his sleep. I want something more." Another voice says, "You want a Radiohead album. A new Radiohead album is in the works, and it'll be here soon, so be patient, and be thankful that you get some bonus Thom Yorke anyway." I am thankful. I'm especially grateful for "A Brain in a Bottle" and "Interference."

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Hypnotic Eye

I'm not surprised to see you and the Heartbreakers delivering another comeback record, Tom. You've never seemed like the retiring type. (And I'm still hoping you'll orchestrate another Wilburys record.) But I am surprised that Hypnotic Eye it's such a strong rock-and-roll record, one that resists the pull back toward your late-80s/early-90s pop reinvention and instead digs into grungy, Mudcrutch-y guitars. Thanks for "Fault Lines" and "All You Can Carry."

Wovenhand - Refractory Obdurate

David Eugene Edwards, it's been a long time since Sixteen Horsepower, and I suspect you're tired of hearing your fans wish for a return to those early sounds. You're on an ambitious journey through so many different blends of your own fierce, prophetic style with rhythms and instrumentation from around the world, and I don't want to stop you. I think this is one of your strongest records, and I'm particularly grateful for "King David." But — and I know you may not like to hear it, so I'm sorry — now that you've unleashed your loudest album yet, I do hope you'll scale things back again soon so that we can appreciate your vocals and your lyrics like we did in those early records. Your voice and your verse, they're all the power you need.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Win a Lucinda Williams Double Album: Tell Us About Your Favorite 2014 Album

It's a Christmas miracle: I ended up with a second copy of one of my favorite 2014 albums. And I'm in the mood to give somebody a Christmas present.

So tell me: What album meant the most to you in 2014? And why?

Post a paragraph or two telling us about your favorite in the Comments below (Your post may take up to 24 hours to actually appear, depending on my availability for comment approval).

I'll draw a name from those contributors on January 3, and I'll mail the winner the excellent 2014 double album by Lucinda Williams: Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

The Complete 2014 Christmas Playlist

It started as a spur-of-the-moment experiment.

I asked Joe Henry if he'd be willing to share his Christmas favorites playlist. I so admire his music, the projects that he chooses to produce, and the way that he listens. I wanted to hear what he hears at Christmas time.

At Overstreet Headquarters, we don't have bookends. We have bookents.

But by the time I finished writing him an email, I began to think of other listeners I wanted to ask. And before long, I'd send out so many invitations that I made myself stop.

Maybe two or three of them will respond, I thought.

Almost all of them responded.

And the experiment turned into one of the most exciting and rewarding (and time consuming!) experiences I've had while blogging at Looking Closer.

I hope you enjoyed it. And a whole-hearted "Thank you!!" to the thoughtful contributors who brought this idea to life.

I'm convinced that I should do a Round Two next year. And I'm particularly interested in making next year's list more diverse in a variety of ways. (My invite list this year was somewhat diverse, but you can't really tell based on those who responded.)

If you're interested in participating, let me know.

Below, for your convenience, you'll find the complete list of 2014 Christmas Playlist hosts and DJs, with links to their playlists and commentaries.

UPDATE: CHRISTMAS 2015

Before the Advent season is over, dive back into this list and discover some Christmas music you've never heard before. Revisit your favorites. The more that we meditate on the spirit of this season, the more it will carry over and bring blessings for us and for others throughout the year.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Thanks for sharing this adventure with me.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

The Overstreet Christmas Playlist

I couldn't have asked for a bigger Christmas surprise, or a more enjoyable Christmas blessing, than the personal, thoughtful, revealing Christmas playlists that so many friends have sent in over the past few weeks. Thank you, one and all.

I sincerely hope to host Round Two next year.

Are you tired of Christmas music yet? I hope not. I have a few favorites of my own to share, some that move me, some that bring back memories, some that mystify me.

I could echo many of those have already shared: It's never a complete Christmas celebration at Overstreet Headquarters without the Vince Guaraldi music from A Charlie Brown Christmas that so many have already recommended. Over the Rhine's three Christmas albums are in regular rotation here as well, as is Bruce Cockburn's Christmas. But I think I'll only share two of those Over the Rhine tracks here, and somebody else has already taken the Cockburn song I was going to share: "Lord of the Starfields."

Also, my brother Jason's singing group Rescue has recorded Christmas albums, but I can't find any band-approved videos of their Christmas music online, so...

... here are a few from a long, long list of favorites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k33G-0c3cn0

[LISTEN]

"God Rest Ye" - Bryan Rust, from his solo guitar album Coventry

In 1997, Anne and I had just celebrated our first anniversary, and we were still establishing what our Christmas traditions would be. One tradition has been to make a Swedish Puff Pancake on Christmas morning, each serving topped with a dollop of sour cream. We wanted to choose something that we would want to cook every day of the year, something easy enough to cook every day of the year... but something that we would wait to enjoy only one day out of the year. Something we would share, just the two of us. Some preserved as sacred.

That's one of our distinctly personal traditions.

Similarly, we begin our Christmas season with a musical tradition that is distinctly our own: We put on an album called Coventry, by our dear friend Bryan Rust.

Bryan is one of the most consistently inspiring and joyful people in our lives. He's a musician who never stops applying his talents to bless those around him. He's a gifted guitarist and songwriter and a spirited performer. He sang Bruce Cockburn's "Lord of the Starfields" in our wedding ceremony. And when we put on C0ventry, Bryan's warm, resonant guitar brings familiar carols new life. There is a tender, bell-like quality to these tones, and they fill the room; I can feel them in the hardwood floors.

That's one of the mysteries of music, especially Christmas music: When you choose a song to play at ceremonial occasions, when it becomes a verse in the liturgy of your life, it carries with it associations and memories of years past. It becomes a sort of time capsule that you open year by year, and on each occasion you find more inside, and new perspective on those treasures.

If you'd like to have a taste of an Overstreet Christmas morning, sleep in, then get up and cook yourself a Swedish puff pancake. Here's one tip: It'll taste better if you cook it while you're still in your bathrobe and slippers. And here's a recipe similar to ours. No, I'm not sharing our secret ingredients, but I will tell you that it doesn't hurt to have some thick, crispy bacon on the side. As you enjoy your breakfast. listen to Bryan Rust's rendition of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen."

Tidings of comfort and joy, indeed.

If you're interested in more of Bryan's music — Christmas or otherwise — let me know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em0P9zb3a3k

"Do You Hear What I Hear" performed by Andy Williams

As I was growing up, the soundtrack of Christmas was a series of LPs that had been collected by my grandfather: "The Great Songs of Christmas." There's a whole blog dedicated to this series of records, so if you scroll through the posts, you'll be scrolling through a world of images and links that bring back tidal waves of memory for me.

Thanks to those records, Andy Williams's voice is the voice I most associate with Christmas carols.

And this song in particular must have made an impression on me. The lyrics almost sound like a mission statement for the focus of the rest of my life: Looking closely, listening closely, to art, to beauty, to human behavior, to nature, seeking revelation. For some, the discipline of art interpretation is a way to insist on their own opinions. For me, it's a way of inviting people into conversation, community, and epiphany. If I write in the proper spirit, I'm asking you: "Do you hear what I hear? Do you see what I see?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i1SqFJ3K8Q

"Frosti" - Bjork

From the old-fashioned to the modern. When I hear this — from Vespertine, my favorite Bjork album* — I think of ice. When I think of winter storms in Portland, Oregon, I think more about ice than snow. I remember how our maple trees, our apple trees, and our cherry tree would shine, encased in suits of crystal armor. I remember taking cautious, sliding steps down the driveway in my boots. I remember crunching across the frozen lawn. I remember that school was out. I remember how the day was twice as vivid, twice as exciting, full of possibility. The coming of ice meant the coming of a day in which I could dive into my own imagination and bring new things into being.

*Please do not misunderstand. Vespertine is not a Christmas album. It really, really isn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FoQqrAyPKM

"It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" - performed by Sam Phillips

Turn out all the lights when you listen to this.

This has always been one of my favorite Christmas carols.

But when I heard this arrangement by Sam Phillips — which makes a simple but chillingly effective shift from major to minor, and which first appeared during the end credits of the film A Midnight Clear — it became the one Christmas carol I would need all year round.

I couldn't recount all of the difficult days, the hard nights, when this song has been a source of comfort. I grew up knowing the opening verse by heart. But it is a later verse — the call for vigilance along the dark, hard roads — that means the most to me now:

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow,
look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing!

This arrangement was later picked up by Bruce Cockburn for his Christmas album, in which Sam sang a harmony part. But nothing beats Sam's haunting original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ystvYtmlkh4

"All Blues Hail Mary" - Joe Henry

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

https://vimeo.com/125987607

"White as Snow" - U2

I recommend that you listen to this song first, before reading about it. See if you can discern why I count this — a song about what passes though the mind of a dying soldier in Afghanistan — among my favorite Christmas songs. Do you hear it? That familiar, haunting melody?

If we don't sing about the longing for the coming Christ, how will we be ready to receive him at Christmas time, through a Gospel reading, through an act of kindness, through a song?

If you're still puzzled, read this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peUDPmp_5O4

"Apparition" - My Brightest Diamond

Shara Worden introduced me to my new favorite song about snow this year on This Is My Hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3cfUolJxYg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dg_JWkxeNk

"Justice Delivers Its Gift" - Sufjan Stevens

"Barcelona (You Must Be a Christmas Tree)"

I have very mixed feelings about the voluminous, schizophrenic Christmas albums by Sufjan Stevens. For every lively carol and every poetic composition there's something abrasive and obnoxious.

But here are two highlights from that massive library of recordings.

One expresses, through prayer, the dissonance between the true spirit of Christmas and the materialistic madness that too often overwhelms that spirit with our permission. It's a lament, and a necessary one.

The second is a mysterious testimony of young love, of complicated memories, of how events in our lives tend to take on a starker significance during this season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_rMCwoCLv8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysIzPF3BfpQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnT7pT6zCcA

"The 12 Days of Christmas" - John Denver and the Muppets (Here's a clearer recording.)

"Ringing of the Bells" - The Muppets

"Ode to Joy" - Beaker

Because it isn't an Overstreet Christmas without the Muppets. Puppetry became a part of my childhood Christmases from the time I did a Nativity shadowplay for the Christmas Eve service at my family's church. It continued with miraculous television specials like John Denver's collaboration with the Muppets.

Which leads me to this...

10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDNcJL90Y9A

"Frosty the Snowman" - performed by Jimmy Durante

“Frosty” fit right in with so many of my favorite childrens’ stories from Pinocchio to The Velveteen Rabbit. It was a story about how something that had been crafted with wit and imagination “came to life one day.” I knew that magic wasn’t “real,” but I wanted it to be. The closest real-world equivalents in my world were Jesus’ miracles — but those always came with a heavy lesson. I never felt like laughing at Jesus’ achievements. Perhaps this had more to do with the solemnity of the storytellers, less to do with the way people might have responded to the feeding of 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. Whatever the case, I loved the idea that if you put the right pieces together, your creation would speak to you. “It’s aliiiiiiiive.”

More generally, I just wanted snow. Winter storms in Portland could produce snow flurries, but then they froze from the punishing winter winds that rushed through the Columbia Gorge. I became familiar with the experience of rising to the joyous news that schools were closed for winter weather, only to find the fun almost spoiled by the fact that the city was encased in ice, the trees bending under the weight of their crystalline suits of armor, sometimes losing the larger boughs on which I loved to climb.

The snowman I most remember building was not made of snow but paper. Loving the Rankin/Bass animated television special based on the song, I wanted to show that I could work that magic too. So I painstakingly copied each character’s likeness in a variety of expressions — Frosty with his smiling eyes, his corncob pipe, his black top hat; Jack Frost with his jester’s cap, his angular collar, his pointed nose and severe scowl.

And after I had crafted nearly 30 puppets in tribute to that program, I invited two children from next-door to watch me recreate it on a puppet stage built by my grandfather. They stayed in their seats through the whole production — the script, the songs, and even a scene made of shadowplay.

But there had to be something more than the charm of the character, the fun of the animation, and the satisfaction of recreating that on my own. The whole thing was bound together by the power of story.

It never occurred to me, then, that this incarnation — this miracle made of the stuff of the earth — was retelling a familiar story. When he comes to life, he brings joy to all who play with him. And his story seems to come to an abrupt end when his game of “Follow the Leader” brings the stern intervention of a “traffic cop.” This formidable figure, who speaks for The Law, shuts down the joy of imagination and incarnation. The lyrics don’t explain what happens, but Frosty disappears, saying, “I’ll be back again someday”: a second-coming promise if I’ve ever heard one, another assurance of the story that would come to matter most in my life.

There's an inflatable Frosty the Snowman near the office where I work, and I'll pass more than one rooftop Christmas-light reindeer on my long drive home. Seeing them, I hear the snark of "culture-war" Christians who see such figures as meaningless, as secular icons that crowd the Christ out of Christmas. But for me, they remain part of a meaningful pageant, and they reflect aspects of the incarnation in ways that acquainted my heart with the truth.

11.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nYopnZ9Y7g

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" - performed by Burl Ives

Here’s Burl Ives singing the title song to the Rankin/Bass television special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Ives’ voice always fills my head with strange little animated characters, and inspires feelings as warm as those caused by the children’ choir of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

But my associations with this song did not start out so well.

Rudolph’s story is an ugly duckling story. His appearance earns taunts and he’s rejected from playing games with “all of the other reindeer.” But then Santa shows up, God-like, giving Rudolph an opportunity to rise above them all, like Joseph with his coat of many colors: After all of that humiliation and trouble, it seems the very thing that made Rudolph a target becomes the thing that makes him a star.

At school, I wanted to be a star. Kind-hearted teachers and my parents assured me that I was. But my classmates convinced me otherwise. I felt awkward. I wasn’t as coordinated as my athletic peers. While my interests lay in books, theirs were caught up in expensive toys and video games. I was jealous that most of them were wealthier. And when I brought to show-and-tell the stories that I spent my evenings writing, the praise of my teachers inspired consternation from my classmates, and increased my unpopularity. The Rudolph tale became a comfort, promising that someday it would all have been worth it. An easy lesson: What others do not understand about you just might a gift that God has given you.

All of that I could appreciate. But for me, the song was secondary to the classic television production. And my first encounter with the show ended abruptly. In a scene when Rudolph and his friends were huddled at the foot of a high snow bank, a distant roar set them to trembling with fear rather than cold. The ground shook, the roar grew fiercer, and I, unable to see the source of the noise, was paralyzed with fear of the unknown. When the Abominable Snowman’s crazy-eyed, hulking form lumbered over the hill, threatening Rudolph and his friends, I burst into tears. And that was that. Mom turned off the TV and I huddled in my room until the fantasy faded and my own safe world became real to me again.

Still, he pursued me, that ferocious snow-devil, his power an irresistible lure back to the show. Terror dissolved into fascination with the monster’s capacity to terrify. I wanted to confront and overcome this threat. Steeling myself for the scare during a second viewing — I must have been six or seven years old — I was stunned by the revelation that the monster’s roar was not an expression of malevolence but a bellow of pain. What I had taken for mere villainy was, in fact, a wound that could be healed with some quick tinkering by Rudolph’s friend Yukon Cornelius, a prospector with a pickaxe. Here was some Christmas magic: Rather than overcoming the monster the way that Disney heroes vanquished Disney foes, these characters resolved their threat by paying attention, exercising compassion, and helping their assailant. It felt right — reconciliation, redemption, rather than victory through violence.

I couldn’t help but notice that this song was absent from all Christmas activities at church. I heard it labeled “secular,” which confused me; I’d been led to believe that secular music was to be viewed with grave suspicion. But everything about this fairy tale — the one in the song and the one in the prime-time special — rang as true as Narnia.

12.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZmoxHLuE3g

"Away in a Manger" - performed by Mahalia Jackson

For this playlist, I browsed YouTube for 50-year-old recordings of “Away in a Manger.”

Mahalia Jackson’s performance takes me back farthest, so I’m singing with her now; but she doesn’t sing all of the lyrics that my Sunday school class of nose-picking preschoolers performed for beaming parents at the Gateway Baptist Church Christmas Eve service. And since our song about the manger was accompanied by nativity pageantry, I came to associate the carol with every glimpse of a crèche.

From an early age, the wild variety of nativity scenes in homes, churches, and stores fascinated me.

I suspect that my tendency to obsess over artistic excellence may have been inspired by my mother’s selectivity: She gave manger scenes the reverent attention most give their Christmas trees, and she preferred those that were handmade, simple, wood-carved or clay-baked over the plastic, glitter-sprinkled K-Mart decorations.

I also assume that manger scenes gave me an early appreciation for abstraction: Some comprised silhouettes or geometric figures, representational as chess pieces. And, as with a chess board, a crèche was not complete without the full cast of characters: the burrito-wrapped savior (I remember how appealing it sounded to be so peacefully “asleep on the hay”); Mary, kneeling (an impressive feat, as she’s just given birth) and praying to or cradling the Christ; Joseph, standing dutifully by, entirely uninteresting; bathrobed shepherds, smiling like trick-or-treaters hoping for candy; the solemn wise men in their crowns, holding ornate gift boxes. And then, of course, the animals. I came to think that having a manger-side seat must have been like sitting at a campsite where there wasn’t actually a campfire — just a warmly glowing baby.

Still, it isn’t the light of the world that has always drawn my attention, but a character at the edge of the glow. I can’t find him in the lyrics, but he is there for me faithfully, quietly mysterious, since my earliest memories.

I’m four years old, maybe younger. I’m uncomfortable. Bundled up in heavy winter layers. Surrounded by boots, jeans, women’s long coats and men’s puffy jackets, like I’m stuck in a crowded walk-in closet. My mother’s hand is a life-line in this slow, stumbling trudge of pedestrians through a shadowy, sheltered space. Carols fall from heaven — or, rather, from speakers hung at intervals along this chilly labyrinth. I hear jingle bells. I catch glimpses through the crowd of tiny, make-believe Christmas cottages where animatronic elves repetitively prepare packages and sleighs. And then it happens: Immediately to my left, winter coats separate like curtains, revealing the low, rough rails of a wooden fence. Between the rails, a face comes into sharp, startling focus. A long and gentle face regarding me up close.

Email to Mom:

Mom, do you remember taking me to a crowded Christmas maze of some kind when I was little? I remember a narrow path through a variety of Christmas-related sights and sounds. I think it was outdoors, or in an open-air structure, because I seem to remember we were wearing heavy coats. Ring any bells? It’s been forty years. I think we might have been there for a nativity scene.

Mom replies:

What you are remembering is the Alpenrose Storybook Lane. When you were little, it was set up outside the Lloyd Center shopping mall, under cover but still open air. One year we hesitated to go because you had a cold, and that so often went into bronchitis. But we knew how you loved things like that, so we did go. It was a real fairyland, and yes, it was a maze. And there was a donkey.

The donkey. The burro that bore Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, that stood silently in that stable, probably exhausted and uncertain, trying to make some sense of his new surroundings and unfamiliar animals.

I had learned to recognize animals from the elephant to the pelican to the duck-billed platypus; to name them by the simplest sketch; to imitate the sounds they made; to list what they ate and what kind of environment they called home. And Christmas came with its own zoo of whimsical creatures: flying reindeer, cinnamon bears, festive mice. Still, this ordinary animal struck me speechless, froze me at the edge of the fence.

I suspect it had to do with Eeyore. I knew the Hundred Acre Wood as well as I knew my own backyard. Bouncy Tigger and honey-hungry Pooh were like kindred spirits. Fretting Rabbit reminded me of worry-prone relatives, and wise old Owl reminded me of the elders at church. And the droopy, depressed, kind-hearted donkey filled me with pity. But none of them had ever stepped off the page into my world. This may have been the first non-human entity I had encountered aside from the neighborhood’s yapping dogs and sneaky felines.

But I think it had more to do with nativity scenes. When I reached out — I did, I reached out, my hand moving like a metal plate to a magnet, my palm coming to rest against his forehead — what I was doing was learning that, yes, there was such a thing as donkey. Something from the Bible stood breathing before me.

He surprised my fingers as much as my eyes: the coarse stiffness of the hair on his head, dry as the sawdust of my grandfather’s workshop. My cold hand on his warm brow. He seemed resigned, withdrawn. A gust of indifference may have burst from his nose. Having been petted by a thousand people pushing through the labyrinth that day — teased, perhaps; ears probably tugged — he had retreated to that place that livestock go when conditions are harsh, relentless, and must merely be endured.

The thoughts and feelings I presume about those who are foreign to me often come to tell me more about myself than the others. And I think what I found in the burro’s silence was a truth for which I had no words yet: a state of suspension steeped in sadness and loneliness. I wanted to tell this glum Eeyore that he was a good donkey and that everything would be okay. That he would be returned soon the place he belonged, where he would be happier. Maybe, sick as I was, a little claustrophobic, I just wanted to go home. Or maybe my sense that he disliked this confined space, even though all was provided for him, was a glimpse of what would become my life’s most persistent challenge: answering a call to care about the world beyond my comfortable home — my stable stable, if you will.

“Away in a Manger” is a song about safety. “I love thee, Lord Jesus / Look down from the sky / And stay by my cradle….” “Bless all the good children / In thy tender care / And take us to heaven….” As a lullaby for a vulnerable and defenseless baby, it’s a beauty. As a comfort for a frightened child, it’s reassuring. But this Jesus — this no-cry baby — doesn’t that give you pause? It didn’t bother me. As a child, I believed as a child: I accepted what I was taught — by lyrics as much as by scripture. No contradictions occurred to me.

It wouldn’t be until I was 19, reading Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ and then watching Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation, that the stained-glass image of a superman shattered, and I came to believe in a struggling human being, capable of frustration and anxiety, a man who probably wanted to sleep near his company’s campfire as the night grew cold. Some crying he made, I suspect. To believe this child never squalled is to deny his mother the pleasure of comforting him, to believe that he was never frustrated, never rebellious. To believe such a thing is to deny the magnitude of his suffering, making him incapable of knowing what we suffer, incapable of mistakes, incapable of learning. It is to deny him his burst of anger and his Gethsemane anguish. It is to deny him his humanity.

(Come to think of it, don’t the Scriptures tell us that the Holy Ghost intercedes for us “in groaning too deep for words?” Even the Spirit can cry.)

I’m no longer the person who desires a direct journey from “tender care” in my “cradle” into the glory of heaven. My faith was cultivated in the comforts of home, but it became true faith — the conviction of things not seen — in hardship, on roads through the wilderness between Point A and Point B. And in retrospect, I can see how moments of doubt and darkness have been times of intimacy with a suffering Christ.

Looking back, I don’t think that Alpenrose animal was as depressed as I presumed. He must have known green grass. Must have known a pasture. An open space. These things made him. But there, in that public exhibition, encroached upon by so much that was foreign to him, so much ignorance and misunderstanding, so much abuse, he draws upon the DNA that makes him donkey and proves sturdy, stalwart, long-suffering, and gentle.

Likewise, the donkey of the nativity fulfilled his purpose not in the comforts of home, but on the road, striving, laden with heavy burdens, without the company of others like himself, and with no promise of relief anytime soon.

He would come to me again — this quiet, willing servant — as I read Jane Hirshfield’s poem “Mule Heart”:

… it will come to your shoulder,
breathe slowly against your bare arm.
If you offer it hay, it will eat.
Offered nothing,
it will stand as long as you ask.
The little bells of the bridle will hang
beside you quietly,
in the heat and the tree's thin shade.

In this, the beast of burden becomes a sort of omnipresent spirit, one willing to suffer with me. He reminds me of the donkey who became for me both a witness to and an icon of the suffering Christ.

No wonder Robert Bresson’s film Au hazard Balthasar broke my heart: It’s a profound parable about a donkey who, raised by a tender-hearted girl, is cast into a life of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. It spoke to me of the passion of the Christ more powerfully than, well, The Passion of the Christ.

Perhaps that is what I sensed in my Storybook Lane encounter — a premonition of my future beyond my familiar environment, my community’s closed system, my safety from the wilderness. Maybe I had a sense of the hardships that I would find in an unfriendly world; in seemingly endless waits for liberation from places of tedious work; in my longing among strangers for kindred spirits.

Now, when I hear “Away in a Manger,” I sing some of the lines for vulnerable children: “Stay by my cradle / ’Til morning is nigh….” Others I sing for my own difficult hours on dark roads: “Be near me, Lord Jesus / I ask thee to stay / Close by me be forever….” And he comes to my shoulder, having waited patiently for my call, out here in the storm. I can reach out for him. He can carry me.

13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvjA25SPsK8

"The Feeling Begins" - Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel's Passion is my favorite musical meditation on the sufferings of Christ, on what it must have been like to walk among such insufferable people as us, to love us so deeply, and to long for reunion with his father. This is the opening track, which seeks to capture the conflict that Christ carried with him every step of the way.

14.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxEaFAmO_Jk

"Little Town" - arranged and performed by Over the Rhine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csNuJngFftE

"Another Christmas" - by Over the Rhine

In The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark writes this:

C.S. Lewis once observed that while many people use art, only a very few receive it. The texts that get called scriptures by various religious traditions are often used by individuals (mostly quoted out of context) to pepper speeches, buttress bad arguments, and, on occasion, to avoid awareness of responsibility for our actions. We read and quote selectively to better justify what we’ve already decided to do. Where is the self-awareness in any of this, the sense that our scriptures can, and should, change the way we think and act? … We only receive art when we let it call our own lives into question.

If I were to map the progress of my stumbling, meandering faith — from the blissful ignorance of childhood to those moments when keys have opened me up and made me ready to receive a redeeming word — I could mark that journey with these songs. In these encounters, I have struggled to discern the difference between the truth and the trappings. Between the gospel and the lingo. Between the “reason for the season” and the false religion that glorifies shopping, wish-fulfillment, and happiness. The farther I lean into them, the less that I need (or want) Christmas to be “the hap-happiest season of all.”

Happiness, in my experience, is based on temporal circumstances. Christmas is about joy — an abiding sense of God’s blessings and promises that endure no matter how I feel, that carry me even when I am the farthest thing from happy. Sometimes a mere melody can wash away the accretion of a year’s troubles and fears, burning like acupuncture needles into injuries, like stars into darkness, to remind me just how far I’ve gone astray on each annual journey back to Bethlehem.

Only when I’ve let go of all that I want will I be ready to receive what I need.

So while I don't really object to singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," it's easier these days to sing along with Linford Detweiler:

‘Cause we’ve committed every sin,
And each one leaves a different scar.
It’s just the world we’re living in,
And we could use a guiding star.

I hope that we can still believe
The Christ child holds a gift for us.
Are we able to receive
Peace on earth this Christmas?

15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L59J1Xd-Cs

"The Christmas Spirit," by Johnny Cash

I can't imagine a better way to wrap up this series.

Maybe it would have been more appropriate to post the scene in which Linus shares the Christmas story. After all, A Charlie Brown Christmas has been the most popular choice by my special guests throughout this playlist adventure.

But I like Johnny Cash.

Here's a shining example of what the Gospel can do in a life that seems hopeless and wrecked. "Look," says the Lord, "what I can do with broken things." When I remember Johnny Cash, I remember a restless spirit, and one that remained restless even after he embraced the Gospel. But ever after, he wandered with faith and hope in his heart. He still hadn't found what he was looking for, but his heart was in the highlands, and he was making his way there, album by album, song by song, singing until he was welcomed home.

Whether you're in a palace or a barn, safe and warm or out on a dangerous road, I hope some of the songs in this playlist series have blessed you this season.

I wish you a joyous Christmas.

Grace and peace to you.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Nurse Claire Nieman's Christmas Playlist

For unto her, a child is born every few hours.

It just made sense. Inviting people to share Christmas playlists, shouldn't I invite someone who spends her days welcoming newborn babies — each one beloved of God, all of them bearing eternity in their hearts?

"On an average day," says Claire Nieman, "I'll be the primary nurse for two mom-newborn pairs, but it varies." Claire is a registered nurse who works in Maternal and Infant Care at a Seattle medical center. They work with high-risk pregnancies, and they deliver babies who need to go directly to Seattle Children's Hospital for surgery. "My hospital delivers a lot of twins and triplets. A reasonable estimate would be that I care for about 40 to 50 babies, from 40-50 different families, a month. For new parents, I have to basically teach them what babies are."

While her work has often placed her right on the scene for all kinds of crises, from medical emergencies to emergencies of failing hope, Claire has found strength and guidance in ways you wouldn't expect. A 2014 graduate of Seattle Pacific University, Claire was a nursing major and a University Scholar. Talking about her education at Seattle Pacific, she wrote about reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov for the first time. She said,

Out of its many interweaving plotlines, I found that I connected deeply with the story of Father Zosima, a Russian Orthodox priest. There are long passages in the book where Father Zosima discusses the mystery of faith and what it means to live in a world of all-consuming suffering but also profound hope.

As I continued to work as an ICU nursing assistant that year, I began to notice the same longing in my life and my patients’ lives that I saw in the characters — a longing for joy, for renewal, for peace despite everything. The idea that it was perfectly okay to live with these unresolved feelings was totally new to me, and gave me great comfort. It was a powerful example of how literature 'tells us the truth about the truest things,' as one of my professors likes to say."

This Christmas, remember Nurse Claire and her team in your prayers. They will be handling — literally, and with care — some of the season's most valuable and vulnerable gifts, and working hard to help fulfill hopes and dreams for families.

I should also note that Claire is one of the most irrepressibly joyful people I know. And I suspect she'll break into song from time to time as she works.

Here's Nurse Claire's personal Christmas playlist.

•
1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GchEVSx9XEA

"We Found Love" - Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris

This has been my favorite Christmas carol ever since it was released — "We found love in a hopeless place" is, to me, the central theme of Advent, and the source of this song's joy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sq5Bvvx5nc

Half Acre - Hem

There's no way around it — sad things happen in hospitals, even when the rest of the world seems to be celebrating. But just like the songwriter's memory of home contained on a torn piece of a big map, there are small things we hold onto that ground us even in great sorrow, when "every hour our hearts [are] broken." A "scrap of paper / that can crack the darkest sky wide open" — that kind of sounds like the Gospels to me. Just a few paragraphs on flimsy paper can hold a message of hope for the whole world.

https://youtu.be/MzI9ywvIp9Q

"I Pray on Christmas" - The Blind Boys of Alabama

"I pray on Christmas / that the sick will soon be strong / I pray on Christmas / that the Lord will hear my song"

https://youtu.be/lBla7yCx9Yk

"Pale Green Things" - The Mountain Goats

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer," wrote Zora Neale Hurston. Advent contains both the beginning of our church year and the conclusion of our calendar year, which makes it especially suitable for reflection. 2014 has contained a lot of complexity for me, not the least among them the fact that I graduated from SPU nine days after a student was killed and two students were wounded by a man who just wanted to see what it would be like to shoot up a school. I love this song because it captures the feeling of remembering things that were both deeply tragic and deeply redemptive. I wish that the events of June 5th were not part of my story or the story of SPU, but I think we are gradually finding the beauty in the decay — a process that will bring up new questions year after year, certainly beyond my lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lrslGJ1LGA

"Eyes to the Sky" - Joseph

As someone whose work isn't confined to the Monday-Friday week (or even daytime hours) I've always weirdly identified with the shepherds in the Christmas story. They don't get to choose when to work because the sheep need help all the time! The thought of angels suddenly appearing to them is a compelling one to me — who knew how worn out they were, how isolated they felt, or if they even thought it were possible for light to find them way out in the fields.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgl71iLrdP0

"Oculus non Vidit" - Rihards Dubra, sung by the National Lutheran Choir

This is a setting of 1 Corinthians 2:9, which echoes back to the promises of Isaiah. When Christ was born into a world of violence and oppression -- the "land of deep darkness" -- I doubt anyone figured he would show up as a baby. Advent reminds me to look for light in unlikely places, and to trust that somehow it has found us already.

Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man,
The things which God hath prepared
for them that love him.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

W. David O. Taylor and Phaedra Taylor's Christmas Playlist

"David Taylor is one of the leading pastors in the church's effort to reach out to artists."

Thus sayeth the visionary painter Makoto Fujimura in his high praise for the anthology of essays about art and faith called For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts.

I first met W. David O. Taylor and Phaedra Taylor at Laity Lodge several years ago, and we only scratched the surface of our first conversation about art and faith. It was enough for me to discern that they were kindred spirits. Since then, alas, our conversations have been brief, fragmentary, fleeting — partly because we've been separated by distance and busyness. But I followed his progress at Diary of an Arts Pastor. And I've watched and admired the way David and Phaedra have followed the call upon them — moving from place to place and applying themselves in different capacities in order to inspire artists, cultivate art, and instill wisdom in churches about the forgotten purposes and powers of the arts.

They're quite a couple — David and Phaedra.

He was born and raised in Guatemala City. She was born in Scotland, and moved to Dallas at age 13.

David studied at the University of Texas, Georgetown University, the University of Würzburg, and Regent College in Canada. He has degrees in theology and biblical studies, and earned his ThD at Duke Divinity School, mentored by Jeremy Begbie and Lester Ruth. Phaedra earned a "Most Outstanding Student in the Visual Arts" award as she completed her BFA in sculpture at the University of North Texas.

For 12 years David served as a pastor at Hope Chapel in Austin, Texas. Phaedra interned at the Chinati Foundation, in Marfa, Texas.

In 2010, David edited For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Baker Books), featuring contributions by Eugene Peterson, Andy Crouch, Lauren Winner, Jeremy Begbie, and more. I've seen his work in Books & Culture, Christianity Today, and Comment ... and that's only a few of the prominent journals that have published his work. Currently, he serves as Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, and he is the director of Brehm Texas, an initiative in worship, theology and the arts. He is ordained as the transitional diaconate in the Anglican Communion of North America.

Phaedra has explored encaustic painting, printmaking, watercolor and assemblage, and her work has been exhibited around the globe. You can check out her work at etsy.com/shop/pjeanartmachine, etsy.com/shop/ambrosium, etsy.com/shop/bonnyblythevintage, and pinterest.com/phaedrajean.

They live in Houston with they are raising an altogether different work of art: a young daughter.

And guess what: They have some favorite Christmas music.

Tomorrow night is Christmas eve, and Looking Closer's Christmas playlist parade is almost over. It seems right that David and Phaedra, whose live their lives in a fusion of art and faith, would take us a few steps closer to blessed event.

•

DAVID AND PHAEDRA TAYLOR:

Pete Seeger: “The Nativity,” by Sholem Asch

Phaedra and I were sitting at the breakfast table last Saturday. We each had our cups of Ahmad black tea. Blythe and I were eating the gluten-free pancakes we had just made, while listening to Sesame Street music through our Spotify account. Phaedra suggested we change things up and listen to an album by Pete Seeger. We pushed play and waited for the music to play, presumably from his "Traditional Christmas Carols" album. Instead we heard his voice. At first we thought this was simply an introductory commentary to the album.

As it turned out, Seeger kept speaking and the story he told quickly captured our attention, so much so that we stayed at the table for another forty minutes, listening, drinking down the pot of tea, giving each other looks that said, “This is amazing.” We eventually learned that the story he recounted had been written by Sholem Asch. A prominent Yiddish author, in 1939 Asch wrote a long novel in Yiddish, The Nazarene, about the life of Jesus. As the Smithsonian Folkways web page puts it:

"A few years later, at Moe’s urging [Sholem's son and Folkways founder], Asch wrote a shorter work on the Nativity in English that would be of appropriate length for a phonograph record. The story remained unpublished and unrecorded until this Folkways release in 1963. Moe Asch was of the belief that the story should be recorded by 'someone with an affinity for art and the folk idiom, and with a deep sense of social understanding as well.' He decided on Pete Seeger (1919–2014), the legendary folksinger and activist. The recording also includes Seeger singing six Christmas songs. The liner notes provide background about the recording and Sholem Asch, and the text of the story."

It is a remarkable re-telling of the Nativity story. Historical fiction in the spirit of Frederick Buechner, Walter Wangerin, Jr, Anne Rice and David Maine, Asch's narrative finds its perfect match in Seeger's voice. If you have a moment, or an hour and six minutes to be more exact, hear the story of Jesus, Joseph and Mary for the first time again. (You can buy it here on ITunes or here or here or on your own Spotify account.)

Yes, it’s not a song. It’s a reading. But when Pete Seeger reads it, the musical quality of his voice makes it sound like a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDoo6GBujpU

The Brilliance: Advent: Volume 1: “A Light”

The whole album is gorgeous, and it seemed impossible to choose just one song. This haunting song is pure loveliness. It helps me (Phaedra) imagine what it must have felt like to look up in the sky and to see a light like you’ve never seen, and then in one all-too quick moment for it to be gone. What stomach-churning longing would you have been left with? Knowing that it was perhaps the most beautiful and confusing moment you had ever had, and that you would most likely never see it again. Without any video footage to capture the image, you would have to rely on your own memory and the shared memory of your friends to keep the moment alive in your heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_FipGDK4-0

BiFrost Arts: Salvation is Created: “Bring a Torch Jeanette, Isabella”

This sixteenth-century French carol has long been a favorite of mine (Phaedra). The line “Christ is born to the folk of the village” makes me think of how Jesus continues to come, quietly, largely imperceptibly, into unremarkable villages all over the earth. He comes to us: to village folk, to simple folk whose sense of need is persistent and acute. I love the picture of children carrying torches to announce the birth of Jesus, and these dual voices so perfectly fill my ears with a sweet, delightful song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNYRR1EbiZA

Pete Seeger: Traditional Christmas Carols “Glory to the New Born King”

I (Phaedra) love the minor key in this song and how its simplicity conjures up images of campfire singing or fireside family music. The consumer Christmas culture inundates me with worry and over-stimulating noises. This simple combination of voice and guitar provides a sharp antidote. It also helps me to do what often feels impossible: to stay content when everything around me is telling me that I should feel dissatisfied with what I already have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekm7egWDcmY

Sufjan Stevens: Songs for Christmas: “Sister Winter”

This beautiful song, tinged with sadness, is a balm to those with hearts that ache feelings of severe disappointment and devastating loss. While starting slow and quiet, the lament builds into a victorious wishing of a Happy Christmas despite all the hurts we bring into this season. We especially love that the word “friends” is used in this song. So many people do not have families (like Phaedra’s family of origin) with whom they are able to enter into the full celebration of Christmas. It’s nice to hear a song that embraces a Christmas with friends as a full and beautiful thing.

http://music.sufjan.com/track/sister-winter

(This is a live recording so you’ll have to bear with the audience out-of-tune, sing-alongy quality.)

by Jeffrey Overstreet