Not Afraid
Artist: Stephanie Smith
Label: Gotee Records (12.23.2008)
Length: 11 tracks / 39:53 minutes 

Ask most performers and they’ll tell you the same thing – the music business is no picnic. While God-given talent is certainly a plus for any aspiring performer, a good sense of humor can often be the icing on the cake when it comes to livening up the long hours on the road. It was arguably this spirit of levity that motivated Stephanie Smith to poke a bit of good-natured fun at label mate tobyMac during sound check at a recent stop on their Winter Jam tour. Rather than belting out a few lines from one of her own compositions, Smith treated those milling around the arena floor (including Mac) to a decidedly tongue-in-cheek rendition of the very early dc Talk track, “Talk It Out.” Suffice it to say that, with lyrics like “T/ Jumpin’ to the M-I-C/ To promote talk/ In the family,” the song hardly qualifies as Mac’s crowning achievement with his former group.

Fortunately for all involved, Smith’s debut outing contains nary a hint of the decidedly nascent raps and rhymes that propelled the dcT collective’s self-titled and sophomore efforts. The buoyant album opener, “Beauty,” for example, is far more in line with the infectious, polished dance-pop of, say, the Sugababes’ “About You Now.” “Superstar” and the title cut add traces of emo and punk/pop for a sound more in line with “Misery Business” from Paramore. The quieter moments of the sunny, lilting “You Alone” are woven from the same cloth as singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat’s Top 5 hit, “Bubbly.” And the swelling piano-based ballad, “What If I Made a Mistake” is a close cousin to the GMA-nominated Barlow Girl single, “Mirror.”

Thematically, Smith tackles the usual issues faced by those in the teen crowd, including romantic relationships (“Not Afraid”), struggles with self-image (“Beauty,” Superstar,”) and friendships gone awry (“Over It”). At the more specifically-Christian end of the spectrum, while never called out by name, the subject of “You Alone” and “Renew Me” (Savior of this heart/ You renew me) is certainly easy enough to suss out. It has long been argued that an artist’s best work comes when they focus on what they know best, and such is certainly the case here. On “First Words,” Smith offers an unflinchingly honest account of the father who abandoned her as a six-month old child, reconnected with her at age 14, and then walked away permanently shortly thereafter. By refusing to wallow in anger or self-pity, or tie things up neatly by the end of the track, Smith turns in what is easily the record’s most gripping entry. 

As engrossing as they occasionally are, Smith’s lyrics, for the most part, bear the stamp of a still-developing talent. That said, while the wording of cuts like “Love Out Loud” (Listen up/It’s time to make a difference) and “What If I Made a Mistake” (Oh, the steady burning in my heart/ It gave me direction right from the start) hardly qualifies as Shakespearean prose, it isn’t likely that Smith was aiming for poetry when she wrote those songs in the first place. Likewise, she deserves at least a degree of praise for taking the harder of two routes and choosing to write or co-write all of the material on her freshman outing.

In the final analysis, whatever word-related woes befall Not Afraid are largely made up for by its bracing musical section. Indeed, taken within the context of such infectious melodies, Smith’s sure-footed singing and the overarching energy of the album as a whole, the aforementioned lyrical shortfalls could almost be considered moot. Looking to history as an example, it’s doubtful that most listeners who heard the first two dc Talk releases could have guessed in their wildest dreams that the very same group would one day be responsible for the genre-defining Jesus Freak and Free at Last records. If youthful enthusiasm and sheer determination are any indicators of future direction, one can only imagine that Stephanie Smith might just be able to pull off the very same feat.
 

Bert Gangl, The Phantom Tollbooth (02.12.2008)