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Artist: His Name Is Alive
Label: Silver Mountain Media Group
Length: 11 tracks/ 38:17
His Name Is Alive has been doing this for over a decade, so it feels appropriate that their latest entry, four years in the waiting Detrola, is an amalgamation of their sound. Yet, though there are numerous styles and tones that can be heard in Detrola, the record does more than just squash all of it together. It perfectly combines each adjunct of its style in a way that achieves an original sound, a unique take on the indie and jazz genres, and supports it all with consistent, engaging song-writing to boot.
Many of the songs feature singing that is only minutely above a whisper and acoustic guitars mixed with electronic melodies that sound sharp and bare, lending Detrola an often deeply intimate feel, as if the musicians were playing in a campfire setting as opposed to performing at you from onstage. But it also has its snappier parts, wherein free-jazz and quirky synths play along with catchy and smooth folk/blues/R&B melodies and hooks. Detrola can drift along gently and peacefully at one turn, then racket into a loud, exciting tone the next.
Detrola sweeps along rather briskly, yet it somehow manages to grasp and hang onto your attention throughout. The adversity in its style and tone is perfectly controlled, layered, and pieced together in a way that provides urgency in its more kinetic moments–the poppy “After I Leave U,” the soulful “Seven Minutes,” – and gripping emotion in its quieter dirges – “Your Bones,” “Send My Face.” Temptation, depression, and spiritual struggle are themes interspersed within the lyrics, and they often deepen the close and personal nature of Detrola’s sound – “the darkest night I ever saw/ was the night I left my love.”
This is one of the most original and well-balanced releases I’ve heard this year, a record that may be only obliquely Christian in its art, yet achieves excellence and creativity that I wish every Christian artist would strive for. It could end up being one of my favorite records of the year.
Jonathan Avants 6/23/06
