Switchfoot-- Nothing is Sound

[Josh]

Well, the news is starting to pour in regarding the new Switchfoot record, and the first place to get the scoop is Rolling Stone. (Of all places!)

[dgp11776]

Could someone please post the text from this link?  My company blocks Rolling Stone and many other music magazines, and I would like to read it.  Thanks!

[Josh]

Sure. From the link above:

Switchfoot will release their fifth studio album, Nothing Is Sound, in July. The platinum-selling Christian rockers penned the songs during downtime on their recent headlining tour of North America.

"We brought a practice rig with us on the road -- guitar amps the size of your head and this really tiny fake drum set," says frontman Jon Foreman. "We were backstage banging out new songs all day while we were waiting for sound check."

Switchfoot wrote and recorded the basic tracks on computers and then sent them through cyberspace to producer John Fields, before putting the finishing touches on them in Foreman's garage back home in San Diego. The band debuted many of the new tunes live across America to gauge the response from fans. "It's kinda like what Cream and Led Zeppelin would do," Foreman says, "try out songs live and then they'd have their whole record done."

According to Foreman, the album reflects the intensity of touring and the mindset of a band away from home for months at a time. "It's a rock record," he says. "My favorite rock records have been honest, where you feel them way deeper than your ears."

The album's title comes from a line in the song "Happy Is a Yuppie Word," inspired by a Johnny Cash interview. "The interviewer asked Johnny Cash if he was happy in his life," Foreman says. "And he replied, 'Happy is a yuppie word.' Johnny Cash . . . what more can you say?"

In the midst of both touring and recording, Switchfoot found the time to organize a benefit around their favorite pastime: surfing. On May 14th, the band will host -- and take part in -- the first-annual Bro-Am competition, held on Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, California. Proceeds will benefit Care House, a non-profit organization that aids homeless children and young mothers in the San Diego community. "There are gonna be pros and not-so-pros," Foreman says, "but our slogan is 'more bro than pro.'"

On that night, Switchfoot will play a show at La Paloma Theater, where Foreman spent many nights as a youth viewing surf films and attending shows, and where Switchfoot played their first-ever CD release party. "This is where I saw all the punk bands I grew up listening to," he says. "It's a really special place for us."

[Tom]

while i freely admit that i enjoyed The Beautiful Letdown (but radio saturation has caused my disc to lie dormant for at least 8 months); i have more than a little trepidation about the new one. i've watched them go from being obscure, CCM pop/rock for twentysomethings to the O.C.-ification that evolved from it.

i guess my worry is that the new album will be an uber-mod hair-cut, and not an album of great music.

do i make sense, or am i only clear as mud?

so let's just say i won't be racing to the store to buy this one. but i may buy it at some point if enough people i trust (like the Pholks here) find it to be worthy.

[Josh]

while i freely admit that i enjoyed The Beautiful Letdown; i have more than a little trepidation about the new one. i've watched them go from being obscure, CCM pop/rock for twentysomethings to the O.C.-ification that evolved from it.

i guess my worry is that the new album will be an uber-mod hair-cut, and not an album of great music.

do i make sense, or am i only clear as mud?

so let's just say i won't be racing to the store to buy this one. but i may buy it at some point if enough people i trust (like the Pholks here) find it to be worthy.

Oh, certainly, Tom. I, too, am concerned that their newfound success might lead to a subpar set of songs. And indeed, haven't they been getting more and more polished and mainstream with every recording they've made?

[Brenden]

I'm concerned too, the songs I've heard haven't been what you'd call "great songs", not horrible, but not great.

[Tom]

oh yeah. they've definitely gotten super polished. i tell you what: Pro Tools may be the death of organic music as we know it.

many producers today show little restraint in using teckie tools. it is sucking the soul out of the music. for example: the new Garbage album sounds like it was made by robots, for robots. nothing human is in the sound at all. it was processed within an inch of it's life.

(this is yet another excuse for me to sing the praises of Jack White. he records old school style: analog, in Memphis! Booyah!)

[Brenden]

many producers today show little restraint in using teckie tools. it is sucking the soul out of the music. for example: the new Garbage album sounds like it was made by robots, for robots. nothing human is in the sound at all. it was processed within an inch of it's life.

I know what you mean, even though I haven't heard that album. I prefer rough production, it adds to my enjoyment. Polished production only works for some bands (like Anberlin, the polished sound works for them). Others it just sounds lifeless.

[Josh]

Yeah, that's a big part of why I love the music of pholks like Joe Henry, Over the Rhine, and Daniel Lanois; you're not hearing a bunch of sounds that were recorded in separate rooms and then tacked together with a Mac, but you're hearing the sound of musicians interacting with one another. You get real chemistry, real improvisation. That's what's missing from so much contemporary music, I think.

[Brenden]

That was the difference between Derek Webb's first and second albums for me. The first was warm and friendly, the second was cold and dead.

[dgp11776]

Well, I for one will buy this the day it comes out.

[DvChWi]

(this is yet another excuse for me to sing the praises of Jack White. he records old school style: analog, in Memphis! Booyah!)

I read something a while back(I think it was in PFM Arcade Fire interview) saying that the last major manufacturer of studio quality analog tape had gone out of business, and that the only remaining tape is old stock.  If true, I wonder how much longer it will be possible to use analog production and still remain cost effective?  Maybe I sense a business opportunity here...

[murlough23]

Yeah, that's a big part of why I love the music of pholks like Joe Henry, Over the Rhine, and Daniel Lanois; you're not hearing a bunch of sounds that were recorded in separate rooms and then tacked together with a Mac, but you're hearing the sound of musicians interacting with one another. You get real chemistry, real improvisation. That's what's missing from so much contemporary music, I think.

Yeah, but you like Radiohead. I don't think the method of assemblage is the issue here.

Anyway, it's not like Switchfoot's first few records were oh-so-indie-and-artsy-and-cool. They had their merits, and the roughness-around-the-edges was kinda fun. But they were also less consistent than TBL, even if TBL had a much poppier sound.

I'm not one to say that "more mainstream" is automatically bad. If you can write intelligent and memorable songs, the genre shouldn't matter as much. Switchfoot has proven that they can do this. Whether they will do it as consistently as TBL remains to be seen, but I certainly think they have the potential to do so. It's not like they signed to a major label and suddenly became a predictable and uncreative Top 40 band.

I mean, I'm all for being subversive and stuff, but not all which is popular is bad. If TBL hadn't scored any hits and nobody had liked it and it hadn't been released to the general public, we'd all still be talking about how Switchfoot was one of Christian music's best kept secrets.

NP: "Say Goodbye", Joy Williams

[danny316]

Actually, I'd like to take a moment to really tell you how much Switchfoot's current producer sucks, and how they'd sound worlds better if they produced themselves.

I probably shouldn't be saying this....but I know some people who know some people, and, well, I have a disc of early demos from the pre-TBL era. It's mostly the same songs with a few new songs. Nearly every one of them sounds better here. It's not that they're not poppy or that Jerome didn't whip up any electronics, but just that they're not overpolished. Some really good ideas didn't make it to the final mix and I'm a little pissed at that. I don't know if an album really can be considered worse than it is because of what it could have been, but I really don't care for TBL anymore now that I've heard the earlier versions.

Jon can sit around with his brother and churn out a decent sounding song. The pop production is what's been killing them. If Jerome (who's producing credits include The Echoing Green, Mortal, Starflyer59, and a number of other artists) were to produce them, they'd sound much more like themselves instead of like radio-ready pop, and they'd have a bit of the influence that made Mortal and Starflyer become known as some of CCM's best kept secrets. I'd like that a heckuva lot more than their current stuff.

So, to make things short, if they'd just do their own thing instead of spending so much money on their albums, I'd like them a whole lot more. Keeping a little of the live experimentation and rawness isn't a bad thing! Making demos that sound pretty dang good into mediocre pop songs is a bad thing.

[murlough23]

I kind of like polished Switchfoot better than "raw" Switchfoot. So sue me.

The important thing, though, is that they sound the way they want to sound, be it polished raw, overeasy, scrambled, or whatever.

NP: "It Is Well with My Soul", Jars of Clay

[bloop]

Believe it or not, I'm with murlough.  I think the polished sound suits the band better, in much the same way as rougher sounds suit a band like Wilco.  There's no hard and fast rule that I can apply to all artists here.

On the other hand, I think there's polished and then there's *polished** (blinding gleam).  That would be distracting, but I don't think Switchfoot's music is at that point.

(On a side note, does anyone else think "Poparazzi" isn't strong enough as a song to be on two albums.  Which "Dare You to Move" do you prefer?)

[dgp11776]

*clap-clap-clap*  Thanks murlough & bloop.  I agree with both of you.

[murlough23]

Believe it or not, I'm with murlough.  I think the polished sound suits the band better, in much the same way as rougher sounds suit a band like Wilco.  There's no hard and fast rule that I can apply to all artists here.

Wow. I was so not expecting that. But thank you for being a voice of reason. You're right; it's all about what suits the band. Besides, the only really "unpolished" Switchfoot songs are on their first album, plus maybe a few oddball tracks like "Company Car" and "Poparazzi" (songs which I really love). Ever since New Way to Be uman they've had a more produced and less polished sound. Adding a keyboard player just made it easier for their concerts to sound more like their albums. I think it's tough to compare songs from the old and new albums because the quality and focus of the songwriting changed as well as the sound.

(On a side note, does anyone else think "Poparazzi" isn't strong enough as a song to be on two albums.  Which "Dare You to Move" do you prefer?)

No matter how much I like any song, one appearance on an album is enough. If they want to tack on a remix as a bonus or throw it on a best-of album or whatever, that's acceptable, but inserting it into the meat of an album which is supposed to be new material just so that it has another shot at being a single does kind of rub me the wrong way. I mean, in Switchfoot's case, they got lucky and it worked, but I personally could have done without it and I think the flow and theme of an album should supercede the need to rack up hit radio singles, so if your new album is supposed to work as a unified concept, don't go throwing old songs in there.

[danny316]

I kind of like polished Switchfoot better than "raw" Switchfoot. So sue me.

I like the more polished sound too, but compared to some of the other stuff I've heard them do in non-album settings, the most recent album seems overpolished. Some bad decisions were made and a good deal of interesting musical elements were removed.

The important thing, though, is that they sound the way they want to sound, be it polished raw, overeasy, scrambled, or whatever.

I agree that they should have the artistic freedom to sound like they want, but I think freedom always comes with responsibility. They're free to sound like what they want, but they should try not to make bad decisions with their sound either. If they want to sound much less interesting on the final cut of a song, that's their decision, but it's a dumb move.

The funny thing is, as much as the two of us say we like artistic freedom and letting the artists sound like what they want to sound like, we both think Much Afraid is a solid album. I've read a few interviews where the band's said that they thought their producer tried to hard to make them sound like the Backstreet Boys. I think the producer was smart to emphasize the Jars boys' abilities to harmonize though - that's part of the charm of some of the songs. So even though I think it's important to let the artist do what they want, I think that sometimes things can work out for the better anyway if the producer knows what he's doing.

Now if only we could get them to agree with me on that long enough to bring back some of those songs at their concerts....

NP: "It Is Well with My Soul", Jars of Clay

Were you listening to that just for this post or was that just a bizarre coincidence?

[murlough23]

Were you listening to that just for this post or was that just a bizarre coincidence?

Coincidence. It's funny, though, now that I think about it.

I generally agree with your thoughts. The artist should be informed and make good decisions, though "good" doesn't necessarily translate to something we will like, since the whole point is not to be pressured into simply making what someone thinks everyone will like.

I see a producer's job as informing and suggesting. They inform the artist of what "the rules" are, especially if they're young and inexperienced. And they suggest ways in which it might be beneficial to break the rules and try something differently. But ultimately, they shouldn't force the artist's hand if the artist does not want to go in a certain direction. Has it happened at times, even with my favorite artists? Yes. Has it sometimes created happy accidents that turned out to be very good albums? Sure. But as a general rule, it should probably be avoided.

[Silvah]

Well, I personally think TBL is the worst of Switchfoot's album just because it was a ll filler and no thriller. At least for me. I like about half the songs and the other half are skippable IMO. It's not that I don't like hte polished sound, I just don't think it sounds as good as what they did previously. And they don't have as many cool drum parts anymore...

[murlough23]

Most of this probably depends on our reactions to the lyrics and/or melodies. While I thought the lyrics were mostly a retread of past themes Switchfoot had explored, I thought they were set to better melodies, making nearly every song much stronger in both the hook department and the lasting value department (i.e. it would catch my ear instantly but I could see the innovation in the arrangement and I wouldn't be ashamed to listen to it many years later). These things tend to be entirely subjective from person to person and I could see how someone else would be entirely bored with the very same thing.

[Josh]

Personally, I think Switchfoot really found the right balance between the pop sheen and the rougher garage-rock stuff on Learning to Breathe;  sure, the whole thing was very radio friendly, but not to the point of having the crunching Green Day guitars of "Meant to Live" or the general glossiness of the most songs off The Beautiful Letdown.

[murlough23]

Personally, I think Switchfoot really found the right balance between the pop sheen and the rougher garage-rock stuff on Learning to Breathe;  sure, the whole thing was very radio friendly, but not to the point of having the crunching Green Day guitars of "Meant to Live" or the general glossiness of the most songs off The Beautiful Letdown.

I don't think LTB was the perfect balance (though it clearly has the superior version of "Dare") - a few songs on it like "The Economy of Mercy" and "Innocence Again" are just plain bland.

[danny316]

Personally, I think Switchfoot really found the right balance between the pop sheen and the rougher garage-rock stuff on Learning to Breathe;  sure, the whole thing was very radio friendly, but not to the point of having the crunching Green Day guitars of "Meant to Live" or the general glossiness of the most songs off The Beautiful Letdown.

Man, I'd have to say you're completely off there. I think LTB is the most consistent of the SF albums that can be read as concept albums (NWTBH about new life in Christ, LTB about growing in Him, and TBL about the philosophies we approach life with), but I don't think it's got that much of a balance musically. The softer songs and the heavier songs almost sound like they could be on completely different albums. Although, I suppose some of the individual songs are rather balanced between pop and rock (Love Is the Movement and Poparzzi in particular).

To me, the spiritual content of that album is the highlight. Not many Christian bands can really tackle the idea of growing in faith without sounding silly. Then again, I suppose parts of that album are a little silly too....but it's more of an endearing silly than a cheesy silly.

I don't see how Meant to Live sounds like Green Day either. It seems like a bit of a stretch to me.  

[murlough23]

I don't see how Meant to Live sounds like Green Day either. It seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Yeah, I'm not hearing that either. Maybe a teeny bit of Weezer, but even that's a stretch.

Regarding spiritual content, I do think that Switchfoot has started to repeat themselves a bit. While their songs are quite inspiring, I kind of feel like they've been dealing with the same general sense of "There must be something more to life" for three albums now. The Legend of Chin is their only album that seems to deviate from that for more than just a silly song or two. I'm kind of hoping for a different focus on Nothing Is Sound.

[mootmath]

I've had the good fortune of hearing two new songs live, and all I can say is that I hope they keep the same sounds on the album. "Happy Is A Yuppy Word" had a almost U2-esque feel to it and sounded unlike any Switchfoot I've heard before. "My Lonely Nation" was a heavier rock song with some great hooks. I agree with those who believe TBL was somewhat overproduced. If Switchfoot just lets loose and lets their new songs have that raw, live feel, this could be a fine album.

[Brenden]

When I listened to My Lonely Nation I had flashbacks to Meant to Live lyrically. On the chorus at least.

[amalgamate]

When I listened to My Lonely Nation I had flashbacks to Meant to Live lyrically. On the chorus at least.

and every other song jon has ever written?

[Brenden]

and every other song jon has ever written?

He does tend to write about the same thing, yeah.

[BenBarrett]

and every other song jon has ever written?

That's ridiculous. yeah, a lot of his songs have similar lyrical themes, but every one that has the whole "more to life" theme approaches it from a different angle, though the differences are sometimes subtle. jon's a philosphical guy, and he doesn't stray from pondering and addressing the primary questions that plague anyone who takes the time to think about life.

And there are plenty of songs that don't fall into the "more to life" category. I can see how people who only know Switchfoot's hits might be inclined to disagree, though.

[murlough23]

And there are plenty of songs that don't fall into the "more to life" category. I can see how people who only know Switchfoot's hits might be inclined to disagree, though.

I know all their songs and I think the theme is starting to get a bit repetitive.

[Guest]

I know all their songs and I think the theme is starting to get a bit repetitive.

There's a difference between being a bit repetitive and never saying anything else.

[murlough23]

There's a difference between being a bit repetitive and never saying anything else.

Hence why I often gravitate the songs that either say something else, or at least expand upon the default theme more eloquently.

[oneafroboy]

I don't know. I see the repetitiveness of themes as a lack of growth as a lyricist on Jon's part.  

[amalgamate]

That's ridiculous. yeah, a lot of his songs have similar lyrical themes, but every one that has the whole "more to life" theme approaches it from a different angle, though the differences are sometimes subtle. jon's a philosphical guy, and he doesn't stray from pondering and addressing the primary questions that plague anyone who takes the time to think about life.

And there are plenty of songs that don't fall into the "more to life" category. I can see how people who only know Switchfoot's hits might be inclined to disagree, though.

i know i know...i was hyperbolizing mostly.

Jon does use several different themes in his music, but he tends to dwell on the same two or three. Don't get me wrong, i love the foot and i love jon's writing. But i would like to see him touch on some different things on the new album that he's yet to touch upon. I'll probably like it either way though...just nitpicking.  

[murlough23]

I'll probably like it either way though...just nitpicking.

Yeah, same here. They had my #2 album of 2003, so I doubt they're going to majorly slip up with the next one.

[BenBarrett]

I know all their songs and I think the theme is starting to get a bit repetitive.

I agree, it has been repetitive. but if you compare, say Dare You to Move with Meant to Live, they are similar lyrically, but totally different at the same time. Dare is more about challenging apathy, and Meatn to Live is about the frustration of living an unfulfilled, broken life - and the belief that there is more. similar, but still quite different. another example, Learning to Breathe, is a song basically talking about the experience of growing spiritually.

I don't want to take the time to break down each album, but if you just look at "The Beautiful Letdown", there are various lyrical ideas.

Meant to live - already talked about
This is your life - question who you are and where you are going, without regretting the past
More than Fine - approaching life with passion
Ammunition - taking responsibility for "the mess we've made"
Dare - already talked about
Redemption - giving our doubts and fears over to our Redeemer
The Beautiful Letdown - the strange realization that earth is not our home
Gone - life is short
On fire - how the mysteries of God change us
Adding to the noise - the meaningless nature of our culture
24 - the struggle within our hearts to grow and change

[oneafroboy]

Btw...

Anyone else tired of them dancing around the Gospel? I mean, I think Schaeffer said that it is an artist's right as a part of their freedom in Christ not to use religious themes in their art, but I don't know. They have no problem saying Spirit, but... I'm not trying to be your stereotypical Christian fan: "Why don't you ever say Jesus in your music?" I'm not advocating throwing the Lord's name around carelessly. It just seems to me that they dance around it and clothe it in being "intelligent," "searching," or "philosophical".

I don't know. More than anything, it's really beginning to bore me. Just say what you really mean, damn it!

 

[murlough23]

Anyone else tired of them dancing around the Gospel?

Nope. I don't limit art by expecting it to always explicitly explain itself.

NP: "Ready and Waiting to Fall", Mae