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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Five years is a long, dangerous time to wait in between albums--particularly in between a band’s successful first and highly-anticipated second albums. The longer the wait, the higher the chances are for a major disappointment, because expectations run rampant, to the point where even the greatest of records can’t live up to the glorious creation imagined in the head of the avid fan. But those are odds Johnny Q. Public has taken on confidently and aggressively with Welcome to Earth, and the results are a far cry from heartbreak. The band has done some major shapeshifting with its lineup, but the music has remained consistent. In fact, this record sounds so eerily similar to their debut, 1995’s Extra*Ordinary, that the songs could easily have been from the same sessions. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view, but JQP has given the fans exactly what they wanted, or at least what they wanted then. From the alt-rock rhythms of “Violin Song” to the Sabbath-like pounding of “Hey Johnny”, Welcome to Earth runs the new-rock gambit with the greatest of ease. It’s often a hit-or-miss mentality, but, taken as a whole, comes off slick and steadfast. As with Extra*Ordinary, there are the obligatory power ballads (“What Am I”) and the monotonous, shallow riff-rockers (“Sliver”), but they’re merely a pre-pubescent blemish on an otherwise beautiful face of a record. Lyrically, frontman/founder Dan Fritz walks a fine line between the ambiguous and the all-out Christian, but is poetic enough to make his points stick. He has a knack for taking short phrases and imbedding them in the listeners head (you’ll be singing “Even stones have broke His bones” for weeks on end), combining pop sensibility with spiritual prowess. The one glaring flaw here: the addition of “Body Be” and “Preacher’s Kid”, both from Extra*Ordinary. It’s nothing more than the admittance of a lack of confidence in the new material (whether by the band or the label). More importantly, however, it’s an insult to the faithful fans that have been waiting so long for new music. All in all, though, this is good listening. Johnny Q. Public has done what they needed to re-establish themselves as a band that has the potential to make some major waves in the industry. Welcome To Earth is a solid, satisfying record three years late and almost worth the wait. Scotty Teems 10/7/2000
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