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| | Issue #20.11 :: 03/14/2007 - 03/20/2007 | Of God and Rock 'n' Roll
Switchfoot at Headliners
| BY PATRICK WALL
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Switchfoot
Headliners: Monday, March 19
Whatever you do, don’t call Switchfoot a Christian band.
Just don’t do it. Despite the band’s early involvement in the Christian music scene. Despite its Christian-affiliated distributor. Despite its eight Dove Awards. The Christianity issue is the big sticking point with Switchfoot.
“For us, it’s a faith, not a genre”, singer Jon Foreman told the Boston Globe in 2004. “We’ve always been very open and honest about where the songs are coming from. For us, these songs are for everyone. Calling us ‘Christian rock’ tends to be a box that closes some people out and excludes them. And that’s not what we’re trying to do. Music has always opened my mind — and that’s what we want.”
But a band cannot escape its past. Forming as Chin Up in 1996, the band was quickly gobbled up by re:Think, a noted Christian indie imprint of Sparrow Records, which itself is the biggest wing of EMI’s Christian Music Group. Indeed, one of Switchfoot’s biggest breaks came when it was featured on the soundtrack (along with many other CCM favorites) of the Christian-overtoned A Walk to Remember.
But to call Switchfoot a Christian band isn’t exactly correct, either. Because for all its beginnings and theological ideas (“As a Christian, I have a lot to say within the walls of the church,” Foreman told Christianity Today in 2006), it’s woefully inaccurate to pigeonhole the band like that. At heart, Switchfoot is a Christian band the same way Pedro the Lion and Cool Hand Luke can be called Christian bands — the element of faith is there, but there’s a heavy-handed cynicism that comes along with it. In Switchfoot’s case, there’s a lack of pretentious preachiness and few, if any, literal mentions of Christ. If anything, Switchfoot’s examination of faith is much more metaphysical, which is well-trod territory for bands the likes of U2 — and no one’s claiming Bono as a god-head. (Well, except maybe Bono.)
Therein lies the problem — reconciling faith with an often faith-neutral audience. Switchfoot is the most perfect example of the dilemma of the modern “Christian” rock band — there’s something instantly reviled about any artist tagged with the Christian label, and many of those bands will do almost anything to escape the tag. In Switchfoot’s case, it was refusing to play Christian music festivals (as the band had in the past) and turning down interviews from Christian music rags (whom the band had spoken to in the past). Perhaps Spin writer Andrew Beaujon was on to something when he, incidentally describing Switchfoot, said that vaguely Christian bands’ “lyrics often have two different meanings, one meaning for a Christian audience and one meaning for the rest of us. They try to relate to two different groups of people at once.”
At worst, Switchfoot can be accused of duplicitous pandering to sell more records. The actual truth is probably milder, a simple case of wanting to have your cake and eat it, too. Because Christian or not, the fact remains that Switchfoot’s earnest pop-rock has won them as many — if not more — mainstream music fans as it has in the realm of popular Contemporary Christian Music. Since jumping ship to Sony BMG-owned Columbia and cutting most of its CCM ties, Switchfoot has skyrocketed and, astoundingly, kept intact its rather large Christian fanbase. To wit: Switchfoot’s past two records, 2005’s Nothing is Sound and 2006’s Oh! Gravity, have held the top spots on Billboard’s Top Christian and Top Internet Album lists. Sure, sometimes you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. But when you do, damn if that cake isn’t tasty.
SoCal brethren and vaguely Christian earnest rockers Copeland open. Tickets are $23, $20 in advance. Advance tickets and more information are available by calling 796-2333 or visiting headlinerscolumbia.com. | |
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