That bridge is on fire going back to where I've been

Yes, I promise that a non-music related post is coming soon. In fact, it's in the works. I hit writer's block on a post connecting N. T. Wright, Six Feet Under, Pedro Almodovar, and the World Cup. But the draft has been saved and I will finish! But, for now, I need to briefly yell at y'all and tell you to immediately purchase or obtain a copy of the xx, the debut album by the artist The Xx.

Musically, The Xx is very similar to Beach House as they are both very minimalistic in their sound. I would contest that the basic difference is that Beach House can afford to be instrumentally more tepid as Victoria Legrand's smoky vocals can carry entire songs. On the other hand, the boy-girl duet vocals provided by Romy Madly Croft and Oliver Sim are good, but not exceptional. Consequently, the instrumentation has to be (and is) better.

To save your eyes the trouble, a list of why this band is worth checking out:

1) They are three 20 year-olds from London.

2) Obviously, this is not enough to make good music as even a young insomniac can't make good music (see: owl city). But this band creates incredible music. Simple guitar, fuzzy keyboard, wordless vocals and other effects create an energizing 'instrumental' opening track, called intro. Yes, that is the song from the commercial from the olympics. The bass parts on the closing track, Stars, highlight the vocals quite well. Other songs worth checking out are Islands, Cristalized, Heart Skipped a Beat, and Shelter.

3) The lyrics. Like the musical style, they are quite simple. But brilliant. On Islands, Romy sings of having found her lover and not needing to find more. Oliver's vocals come in, singing: see what I've done // that bridge is on fire // going back to where I've been // I'm froze by desire // no need to leave. The song continues by realizing that this relationship may close too many other doors and ends by leaving the door open to this fear. In many ways, the whole album is about commitment (or the fear thereof). On Cristalised, for example, the lyrics struggle with the ability to be close to someone. From Islands, the album continues to explore this theme before ending with Stars. While Stars is, undeniably, a song about sex on the first date, it concludes the commitment in a relationship is something to be pursued. As the chorus points out, 'cos we can give it time // so much time.

4) Their music videos are visually astounding. Most notably, the choreography and repetition of Islands make the video extremely interesting. And the video works wonderfully with the story being sung.

Here's a link to Amazon mp3 to buy the album. And I do promise, a non-musical post is forthcoming.

And your tattooed knuckles oh, how they grind down

*There are those bands that should have never been created. Then there are those artists that everyone should forget quickly. But there is luckily another side to the proverbial music coin. Just barely crossing the chasm of noise, there are those bands that are good, but never great. But journey with me down the halls of music to something beyond mere subjective opinion. I dare you to enter to halls of musicians, who, whether you like, love, dislike, or loathe them, have gained a widespread reputation that lasts for years. I mean, musicians that, for better or worse, have made a lasting mark on history. Such artists include Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, U2, the Rolling Stones, and, disregarding many more, Bruce Springsteen.

Of course the band I wish to present to you may not make such a lasting mark on history. Time will only tell how far down the magical musical road of greatness this band travels in the minds of the general populace. Objectivity aside for a moment, I contest that the Gaslight Anthem is an absolutely tremendous band. Of the musicians to influence this New Jersey four piece, Bruce Springsteen stands out. Their rock 'n roll carries many Bruce overtones and it is quite evident in their lyrics. The Backseat of The '59 Sound is an obvious nod to Bruce's Backstreets. The lyrics and title to Meet Me by the River's Edge off the same album includes nods to (at least) No Surrender, Bobby Jean, and The River. If that wasn't enough, Bruce has played with The Gaslight Anthem in their songs and they have played with him in his.

But so far all I have done is to encourage Bruce fans to listen to The Gaslight Anthem. For all you others, however, I must state that The Gaslight Anthem is what it means to be rock 'n roll. Driving in the car with the windows down this summer, what you need is great, not just good, rock music. And the Gaslight Anthem delivers. The '59 Sound is where I recommend you start as the album is utterly perfect. While songs such as Great Expectations, The '59 Sound, and Casanova are straight up rock 'n roll songs with incredible lyrics, Film Noir changes the pace a little bit, allowing the listener to vent with this angry song. Slower tunes such as Here's Looking at You Kid and Meet Me by the River's Edge grant the ears a pleasant break and create a superb balance to the album.

The Gaslight Anthem just came out with their newest album, American Slang, this past Tuesday and, if you've been seeing my facebook comments and tweets, you will know that I think it's a pretty freakin' big deal. The most I can do is implore you to get both of these albums and give 'em a listen yourself, but let me make a few comments regarding AS. While the opening track (American Slang) lulls you into a sense that this album will be very similar in style to The '59 Sound, the second track (Stay Lucky) immediately changes your mind as Brian Fallon and the boys pull out a few new tricks. The new tricks continue throughout the album and it sounds drastically different from The '59 Sound. Highlights include the down-and-out songs Bring it On and Boxer as well as the interesting choruses and guitar quips that make The Diamond Church Street Choir come to life.

*All-in-all, I think American Slang is the best album to have come out this year and will be hard to top.

The Kingdom of God and Jesus Christ

Having finished the marvelous After You Believe by my good friend N. T. Wright, I moved into my next summer read, The Kingdom of God, a collection of sermons about just that by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I would highly recommend both books (though I have yet to finish the latter).

Today, in The Kingdom of God, I read the following passage. The Biblical passage that Lloyd Jones discusses (Luke 11:14-20) and perhaps more clearly its counterpart in Mark (Mark 3:22-30) show us that Jesus, in ushering in the kingdom, binds Satan in his first coming. Although though Satan still works in this world, God in Christ has ultimate power over him. Consequently, we long for the final coming of the kingdom of God in full power and the abolishment of all evil. At the same time, we work for the kingdom, seeing how through Jesus' life and death Satan has been bound.

"The kingdom of God comes, and came, with the very presence and power manifested by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. There is a wonderful illustration of that in Luke 11:14-20: 'And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered. But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven. But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub. And if I by Beelsebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.'
Now that is what I mean. The kingdom of God came when the Son of God was in this world. The kingdom of God is a manifestation of the power of God; a manifestation of the fact that God is superior to the elements of nature, that He is superior also to the devils and to everything that is evil. The kingdom of God is God's reign and when Christ was here on earth, and when He worked His miracles and manifested His marvelous powers, He said: 'This is the kingdom of God.' Not legislation, not one army conquering another, but the manifestation of the power of God. And did you notice what Christ did? He could calm a storm at sea; He could heal the blind, heal the lame, heal the deaf. He could even raise the dead! He was the Master of creation; He was the Master over all the devils, and He said that that was proof positive that the kingdom of God had come." -Lloyd-Jones, 57

No I won't be no runaway 'cuz I won't run.

So I will never enter Professor Harper's basement lab to work on lipid biophysics again. On the plus side, three students are replacing me. Though the most logical explanation for such a phenomenon would be that Professor Harper has greater funding than most years, I chalk it up to the need to replace me with three people. That's how good I was...yeah right. But walking out of the lab on Thursday, I realized that I will miss biophysics work.

Now is where I, in rare form, get sentimental about the parts of college I will miss. I guess I can allow myself this as I pick up maintenance work at Wheaton College tomorrow and start a new mini-chapter in my life before going to Seminary at SBTS in the fall!!

For one, I will miss being a Sunday School small group leader with Sam Haist for three years in Discovery Village at Ada Bible Church!! We have taught many of the same boys for two or three years and yesterday was bittersweet as I said goodbye to several of them. What a blessing and privilege it was to serve God and to serve those families for three years!

I will also miss volunteering at ICCF. For those yearning for enlightenment, ICCF stands for Inner City Christian Federation and is an organization in Grand Rapids helping with mortgage foreclosure prevention and placing families in homes or shelters. I have volunteered this past year, working heavily with the foreclosure prevention counselors. They have been so much fun to work for and I will greatly miss them.

I will miss several wonderful opportunities I have had to engage with my major (physics) at Calvin within the context of helping other students. This includes tutoring, grading, and lab-assisting.

Finally, I am going to miss my friends. Especially my housemates this past year (Micah, Grant, JJ, and Samikins). But also all you others who made Calvin such a wonderful and enjoyable time. I hope to see many of you again! And, of course, I will miss 80's night with the Ridge and other friends. But I know I will go to an 80's night again...sometime when I visit G-Rap.

As this summer dawns on y'all, do yourselves a favor and get one of these epic albums that have recently been released:
Together by the New Pornographers (indie-rock at its finest)
This is Happening by LCD Soundsystem (electronic/dance)
So Runs the World Away by Josh Ritter (rock and roll with a lot of words)
High Violet by The National (abnormal, but beautiful vocals overlaying great rock and roll)

Nice Chatting, Eat the Pizza!

Working at John's Christian Stores in high school, I worked a fair number of various in-store events and concerts. Perhaps the highlight of these experiences was when Joy Williams came and I got to be her bodyguard for a little while (It's really not that glamorous; I just stood by her table while she signed autographs). But the crowning moment of the night was when I was on break in the back eating the dinner I had packed for myself, while there was pizza for the band on the table. Joy came back and we struck up a brief conversation, which ended with her asking why I wasn't eating the pizza. After saying it was for her and her crew, she said I was more than welcome to eat the pizza. At the end of the evening, I got her to sign a poster for me on which she wrote "Nice chatting, eat the pizza!"

Well, like most CCM artists, Joy Williams was nothing special musically. So I quickly forgot her. Since my high school days, Joy has left CCM and moved to Nashville, working on various music projects there. Tonight I stumbled upon her latest, a duo she's formed with John Paul White called the Civil Wars. You can check out their uber-hip myspace here. And their music is some of the most beautiful, refreshing music I have heard in a while. Their voices flow together marvelously, creating gems such as Tip of my Tongue. I implore you to do yourself (at least) two favors. One, watch the video for Poison & Wine. Two, download their FREE live album from their myspace. If this whets your musical palette, please support them and download their EP.

They have been compared to The Swell Season, the couple from the movie Once, whose newest album Strict Joy is incredible.

Choppy Seas

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." Revelation 21:1

So I have been thinking quite a bit on this verse, when pondering the continuity between the earth now and how it will be transformed in being made new. In Romans 1:21-22, we see that at Christ's second coming, all of creation will be set free from its bondage! Not destroyed, but set free from its bondage. Likewise, we see in Revelation 21:1 that the first earth will be transformed into the new earth. Evil and pain will be abolished from the earth we live on as it is transformed; made new.

So what about this statement regarding the sea? Thinking back on the stories of Jonah, God parting the sea for the Israelites, and creation, where God's new order emerged from the dark primal sea, we begin to understand what the sea represented for the Jewish people. "The sea came to symbolize...the dark power of evil, threatening to destroy God's good creation, God's people, God's purposes. In books like Daniel, the sea is where the monsters come from" (N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, p. 52). Consequently, just as we see Jesus' power of the agents of chaos in His calming of the storm (Mark 4:35-41), we see that God's visible defeat of chaos and evil will occur at the second coming of Christ. Balancing the idea of the "already and the not yet" we see that Christ has already defeated the forces of evil at the cross, but the final, visible nature of this defeat will be inaugurated in his second coming.

But the main reason I wrote what I have is as an introduction to the next passage. Psalm 107 is a community thanksgiving that accompanies the offering of sacrifices for the Israelites. The thanksgiving has many parts, but in verses 23-30, we find the people extolling the Lord from rescuing them from the dangers of the sea. These verses triumphantly proclaim the power of God over the raging sea, but with Scriptures such as those already outlined, they also attest to God's power over the forces of evil; the forces of chaos.

"Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
they saw the deeds of the LORD,
his wondrous works in the deep.
For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven;
they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits' end.
They they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
They they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven."
-Psalm 107:23-30 (ESV)

Christian Character & A Kingdom View

I've been reading Tom Wright's latest, After You Believe and it's fantastic. He unpacks why virtue (properly defined) matters and why, after you believe, Christian character is of utmost importance. Here he talks about ways to view the New Testament:

"Christians, particularly in the Western world, have for a long time been divided between 'epistles people' and 'gospels people.' The 'epistles people' have thought of Christianity primarily in terms of Jesus's death and resurrection 'saving us from our sins.' The 'gospels people' have thought primarily in terms of following Jesus in feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and so on. The 'epistles people' have often found it difficult to give a clear account of what was going on in Jesus's kingdom-announcement and his call to his followers to be 'perfect.' The 'gospel people'--or perhaps we should say the 'beginning-of-the-gospels people' since the line of thought they embrace usually screens out the last few chapters--have often found it difficult to explain why the Jesus who was doing these remarkable things had to die, and die so soon...The either/or split does no justice, in fact, to either the epistles or the gospels. Still less does it do justice to Jesus himself. For him, the kingdom which he inaugurated could be firmly established only through his death and resurrection. Or, to put it the other way around, the main purpose of his death and resurrection was to establish the kingdom he had already begun to inaugurate." (pg. 110-111)

N. T. Wright unpacks this a little...and then (and this is gold):

"Once again, part of the problem is that for many centuries Christians have assumed that virtually the only point in Jesus's death was "to save us from our sins," understood in a variety of more or less helpful ways. But for the gospels themselves, that rescue of individuals (which of course remains a central element) is designed to serve a larger purpose: God's purpose, the purpose of God's kingdom. And in God's kingdom human beings are rescued, are delivered from their sin, in order to take their place (as Jesus already called the disciples to take theirs) not only as receivers of God's forgiveness and new life, but also as agents of it. In other words: rulers and priests." (pg. 112).