Top Ten of Twenty-Ten

I love the beginning of Christmas break for several reasons, yet one of them, in my nerdiness, is putting down into cyber-writing my top 10 albums of 2010, whether you care or not. This year, the list was mighty hard to compile with so many great albums coming out and I even have to include some honorable mentions that didn't quite make the cut:

Honorable mentions: Beach House - Teen Dream, Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone, The New Pornographers - Together

10. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
Notable songs include Dance Yrself Clean, Home, and I Can Change. And watch the video for Pow Pow, rather fascinating to say the least. James Murphy ends his solo career (if he is?) with a fantastic, artsy bang.

9. She & Him - Volume Two
Notable songs include Thieves, Lingering Still, and Over it Over Again. M. Ward creates even richer, lusher musical sounds than those on Volume One to highlight Zooey Deschanel's enchanting vocals.

8. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Notable songs include Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), We Used to Wait, Empty Room, and City With No Children. Regine and Win deliver another KO punch with this 16-song gem criticizing life in the suburbs.

7. The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
Notable songs include Boxer, The Spirit of Jazz, and Bring it On. Americana lyric-writing at some of its finest backed by Brian Fallon's amazing guitar tones.

6. Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away
Notable songs include Change of Time, Southern Pacifica, Folk Bloodbath, and Orbital. And watch the video for The Curse; gorgeous beyond belief. JR continues to write the most amazing love songs out there through the medium of historical folk narratives.

5. Over the Rhine - The Long Surrender
**So this album technically comes out next year, but I've already received my physical copy, so I'm counting it; suck it up.
Notable songs include The Laugh of Recognition, Only God Can Save Us Now, and All My Favorite People. Teaming up with producer Joe Henry and welcoming Lucinda Williams on Undamned further enhanced the musical versatility and abilities of Karin and Linford.

4. Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
Notable songs include Roll Away Your Stone, Awake My Soul, and After the Storm. Wonderful Biblical references within their lyrics abound, and I even recommended this album to the worship pastor for my church.

3. The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt , Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird
Notable songs include The Drying of the Lawns, King of Spain, and Like the Wheel. Swede Kristian Matsson allows simple guitar arrangements to highlight the incredible versatility of his voice (easily his best 'instrument') and beautiful lyrics tapping the deepest of human emotions.

2. Javiera Mena - Mena
Notable songs include Hasta La Verdad, Luz de Piedra de Luna, and Sufrir. Taking four years to release her sophomore album, Chilean Javiera Mena perfects layer after layer of electrical goodness on each of her canciones. The album that, along with Tom Waits' Blood Money, defined my fall.

1. Band of Horses - Infinite Arms
Notable songs include Compliments, Laredo, Older, and Dilly. The album that single-handedly defined my summer and erased the 'overrated' picture I had of BoH. These boys know how to play nearly perfect, gritty, folky rock 'n' roll.

Just enough dark to see, how you're the light over me

Being done with finals signifies...kickin' back and doing nothing for a few days before heading back home!!

Between switching out loads of laundry, I rewatched "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and was, yet again, amazed by this amazing movie.

It's an epically long 160 minutes and moves along really slow. Long scenes and the slow, precise manner of speaking of Jesse James (Brad Pitt) contributes to this. But, as one review put it, the movie "is a throwback to another time when films were allowed to be unhurried, when audiences trusted multiple story lines to converge organically, and time and place were evoked with consummate craft. The old is new again, and it has never looked so breathtaking."

It's the attention to detail that not only so elegantly crafts the movie, but crafts the character of Jesse James. More than anything else, we see an outlaw driven by insomnia and paranoia as the bounty on his head gains appeal for those in his gang. Paranoia, as it usually works, drives more people away than it attracts. We see the effects of this in Robert Ford, played so marvelously by Casey Affleck, as his childhood dreams of emulating Jesse James come crashing to the floor upon meeting him. Additionally, Robert Ford has grown up coating a desire to be Jesse James with attempts to be like Jesse James.

Ultimately, this is a slow-moving movie that climaxes in a tremendous ending, showing how Robert Ford fails to get the attention and fame he desires and loses a friend in Jesse after offing him. But every time I watch this movie, my favorite acting performance changes. The first time through, I loved Affleck's portrayal of Bob Ford, but this time I was mesmerized by Sam Rockwell's performance as Charley Ford, Bob's older brother. Additionally, I noticed the guest appearance of Zooey Deschanel as the singer Dorothy Evans who is Bob's sole friend after the assasination of Jesse. Though not a Weeds fan myself, MLP also appears in this movie, as Jesse's wife. But, seriously, watch this movie. It's tremendous from start to finish.

Still Beating

"You're not the fastest draw in town now
How many times have you been shot down now?
Seems like everybody else could see the things you never did
But if you could yourself you'd probably never have
made it through the things you did
with your heart still beating" -Still Beating, Jo$h Ritter

When I grow up, I want to be just like Josh Ritter. Seriously, he's hilarious and oh so good. Examples....

1) how could you pass up this opportunity?? A valentine's day brawl! who knows what that will even entail.
2) I want this shirt real bad. you should too.
3) Best music video of the year? His album's in my top 10, perhaps top 5 for sure.
4) He gave up neuroscience or something similar to get a degree in historic folklore as told through narrative songwriting or something obscure like that.
5) He's effectively distracting me from studying. :-)

Conclusion: Josh Ritter, you are one classy dude.

When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas eve

you promised me broadway was waiting for me...

This blog will, simply put, be a brain dumping of the theology threads weaving through my brain recently and giving me gut punch after gut punch of challenges as to how I live my life. I hope, if you read this, that some of it is coherent and it might challenge and bless you as it has me. Most of this comes from two sermons (one, two) by C. J. Mahaney offering reflections on Jude and you should check them out. I proceed by presenting the two passages gnawing on my heart like amyloid plaques on organs:

"Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James,
To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:
May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you." Jude 1,2 (ESV)

"But you beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life." Jude 20, 21 (ESV)

As C. J. points out, Jude establishes the indicative in verses 1 and 2 that gives backbone and meaning to the imperative in verses 20 and 21. The indicative is that those who are called are kept for Jesus Christ by God. The imperative, then, is the command to keep yourselves in the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. In many ways it seems a bit circular, but ultimately it reveals the calling, drawing action of God, but the responsibility of us to work out our salvation; to keep ourselves in Christ. In other words, while we do not work for our salvation, we work out our salvation.

What gut punches me over and over, though, is the three ways Jude lays out to keep ourselves in Christ: 1) build yourself up in your most holy faith 2) pray in the Holy Spirit and 3) wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. In my walk, I find that I gather the most strength, the most passion in what I have designated point 3. In short form, I am an eschatology junkie. A Christianity without hope in God righting all wrongs and redeeming His children along with the non-human world (which won't burn up, sorry to disappoint you, but the Bible told me so), is not a Christianity worth fighting for. And we fix our eyes on Jesus, whose death and resurrection provides the hope for the future resurrection of believers. I can't wait for, in the words of Mumford & Sons, when there will come a time with no more tears, and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.

But this is just one building block of keeping ourselves in Christ. The other two are integral as well. And, oh, how I need to preach the gospel to myself daily (check out this resource for expansion on this idea). And, oh, my prayer life needs a kick-start....almost all the time. So, if making disciples of ourselves and our brothers involves developing habits, developing spiritual disciplines, God (through Mahaney) has gut punched me yet again, yet encouraged me in such a rich way. Where is the encouragement you may ask? In the steady, unwavering love of God. Check out the closing verses:

"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." Jude 24, 25 (emphasis mine, ESV)