The only good Christian band
A tribute to the group that transcended their market's limitations
I still remember where I was the first time I listened to a Jars of Clay album. I was 12, and my family's house had a little-used sitting room with green walls and carpet and an old but relatively advanced (for the time) audio system, complete with a bunch of small level sliders that I didn't understand. The volume was turned up higher than I expected, so I started a little when the sound of an accordion played out of the speakers, which were about three feet tall and encased in cheap wood. I sat there for a long time, listening, realizing that music was far more expansive than I thought it could be.
I can imagine some of you scratching your heads. "Really, an accordion? That's all it took?" You have to understand the kind of music I'd been listening to. It wasn't the accordion, it was that someone gave a shit about the way the music sounded.
My mom ruled our house when it came to the kind of media we consumed. Most of what made it through her filter was either Christian or the stuff she liked when she was a kid. When I was young, I don’t think we had a mandate that we weren’t allowed to listen to any non-Christian music. It was just that there wasn't any non-Christian music in the house, and the car radio was always tuned to the local Christian music station.
In my adulthood, I realized that while my mom enjoyed music and even had a bit of musical talent herself, she didn’t have a very strong personal musical taste. Mainstream pop culture is a pipeline that tells you what’s important, and Christian pop culture has its own version of that. When I was little, my mom listened to Sandi Patty and Twila Paris, and when I was a little older, those two artists were no longer in vogue, and suddenly my mom was listening to Avalon and Point of Grace, instead. That’s not to say that none of the people we listened to had talent -- Patty’s vocal range is legendary, for example -- but a lot of it was pure product, built for mass appeal, but with the added detriment of Christian music’s lower musical standards.
When it comes to mainstream music -- “secular,” in the parlance of the converted -- a lot of what you hear on the radio is bad, and it always has been. When you’re trying to win over a ton of people, you often rely on lowest common denominator tactics and trend-chasing. There are plenty of bangers that make it through, of course, but you’ll have to sit through some trash. Christian music has the same problem, but deeper: Since it’s a smaller pond, the bigger fish don’t need to be as good, and since the audience is at least as concerned with the theological content as it is with the music, standards are low. After all, the only reason I had the Jars of Clay CD was because a friend’s dad had given it to me, complaining that he didn’t understand what any of the songs meant. He was used to the band’s first album, with songs like Love Song For A Savior that stated themselves plainly: “I want to fall in love with You.”
Jars of Clay bucked what Christian music was by bothering to be good -- and not just good by Christian music standards, but actually good. The band could have coasted off the success of their double-platinum self-titled debut, a collection of more straightforward folk-rock Christian songs that, while still solid, lack some of the darker themes and nuance of their later work. Instead, they changed up their style, creating the more brooding, alternative Much Afraid. The core quartet (singer Dan Haseltine, guitarists Stephen Mason and Matthew Odmark, and pianist Charlie Lowell) would continue to do this entire career, changing up their genre while retaining their sound, offering poetic, lyric-forward songs with eclectic, surprising arrangements that can vacillate between slick rockers, quirky alternative jams and contemplative ballads at will.
This commitment to intellectual, evolving musicality and writing often led them to alienate the fans of the very genre they were ostensibly supposed to be a part of. While Much Afraid landed a few solid hits, the album didn’t sell as well, beginning a slow downward trend in popularity that would continue throughout the rest of the group’s two decades (and one that roughly coincided with the group’s increased musical ability and lyrical maturity). Focus on the Family’s pop culture review arm criticized Much Afraid for not containing enough “edifying answers” for Christian teens. The Valley Song, a later single about faith through mourning, got a muted reception from Christian radio stations, some of which deemed the song too sad. The band later received scrutiny from the larger Christian media for writing an anti-war song that was critical of George W. Bush (the track ultimately went unreleased through official channels, though Haseltine once made it available as a free download). It was a different, non-musical scandal, however, that largely ended the band’s career in 2014 -- I’ll get into it later, but once again Jars was on the right side of history.
What all their mini-scandals had in common was simple honesty, a recognition on the band’s part that one’s views need not be set as long as you are searching for the truest truth with an open heart and mind. Their journey was not one of fixed, unquestionable answers, which meant they never fit comfortably into the rigidity of Christian pop culture.
It’s also why I selected this essay’s somewhat facetious title. There are, of course, other musically talented artists who have worked in a primarily Christian space. Larry Norman created some endlessly listenable work and wrote biting, poetic lyrics, but his career deteriorated as his health did, and his targets for criticism are too scattershot and often undeserved. Dc Talk crafted some excellent tunes in the second half of their career, but the early albums are crap and even many of the lyrics on their good albums are judgmental, cringingly simplistic, or both (Kevin Max is a great singer and great on Twitter, however). The list goes on.
I call Jars of Clay the only good Christian band because they’re just about the only Christian band I’d recommend to anyone, regardless of their faith status. They were Christians, yes, and that faith bled into their work, but their songs are about a set of interests as diverse as any artist’s. They’re songs about life -- and they sound damn good, too.
In two weeks, I’ll be getting more into the band’s musical history (and likely my personal history with their music) by way of a comprehensive and totally subjective ranking of every song they’ve ever released, from worst to best. I hope you’ll join me again then and discover some great music, perhaps for the first time.
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What else is good on the internet?
It’s a bit bleak, but I found this story about what happens to unclaimed bodies to be fascinating and touching.
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From the field
I wrote a review of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I quite enjoyed the movie, which touches on some of the same themes I wrote about above.
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Follow me on Twitter @RTHowitzer, read my Letterboxd reviews @mrchumbles, listen to my Star Trek podcast at outofcontreks.podbean.com, or email me at outofcontreks@gmail.com.