Shockingly … oh, wait, we mostly liked this.
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[7.00]
Alfred Soto: “I had a divine revelation last night,” the appropriately named Church growls over blues chords, and luckily it’s about a god whose qualities continue to mystify audiences. Because modern country is the genre with the most vital guitar licks and persuasive rhythm sections, it has the most to offer reactionaries who want the verities of rock and roll and for whom the likes of Wilco are, rightly, so much perfumed air. This is an example of ambition without craft — the song collapses in the last minute. As a manifesto, though, it’s compelling and deserves its platinum.
[7]
Josh Langhoff: No no no, Eric, you’re thinking of Charlie Daniels, and he is not Jesus, no matter what he says when you’re together hunting, fishing, and enjoying other outdoor activities. But then, Eric and I have so much to talk about. Why, for instance, does his excellent soft rock ballad “Springsteen” sound like Bad English, while THIS song swipes the riff from Springsteen’s “Fire”? (Maybe to set up the “Fire On the Mountain” bit?) Will Country Music Jesus’s reach extend to all humanity, or simply to the realm of country music? I dunno where Eric places Jamey Johnson in the great “Country Music Jesus” sweepstakes, but the shaggy concert I attended was a little more laconic than this whole revival business, while I’m pretty sure people bang drums, scream, and shout at Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum shows. Which, I guess, proves once again that you can never predict what Jesus is gonna look like. Speaking of which, has anyone ever told Eric Church, maker of my favorite album of 2011, that his twang sometimes resembles Rob Thomas?
[7]
Jer Fairall: I generally lack the taste and the sensibility to discuss contemporary mainstream country with any real measure of fairness or insight, so I would hope that attentive readers who may have noticed the absence of my two cents in our otherwise well-populated Billy Currington and Toby Keith reviews will take it less as an act of snobbery than a kind of peace-keeping truce. Basically, country stays out of my way, I stay out of country’s way, and everybody’s happy, right? In the true spirit of amnesty, though, I’ll let this one through and take a good, hard look at perhaps one of maybe five pop country tunes that I’ve listened to on purpose in all of 2011. Odds are that one of my fellow Jukeboxers could not have picked a more appropriate song to challenge my prejudices, as this track seems designed to fly in the face of several of my own about the genre. Not all of them musical, either: the titular conceit is idolatrous in a way in which I never would have expected, and the idea of calling for a revolution in a style that I generally avoid panders to my country-phobia in a surprisingly provocative way. The music, too, has a harder, grittier edge that I’m used to, edging a bit in the direction of Steve Earle’s Transcendental Blues-era experiments. Halfway through, though, it takes a turn for the blandly anthemic and lyrically glib, at which point “preaching from The Book of Johnny Cash” is all well and good until you start cribbing from the fake book of Nickelback. Kudos to all involved in getting this made and directing it toward my ears, though; I may not end up feeling it, but you all gave it your best shot.
[5]
Brad Shoup: Using drop-D tuning in a song about a true-kvlt country revival? Oh Eric, that’s wonderful. What’s also wonderful is his taking the titular conceit literal: he wants a second-coming, picture-book Jesus, with all the attendant gnashing and glory and judgment that implies. This being Church, he stores his purity pleas in a grunge-rock vessel, an impeccably-mixed amalgam of gruff riffage and gospel-choir bullshit. This could have worked in a leaner, Tennessee Three-type model, but Church’s waypointing has always taken a rock route, similar to Jace Everett or Jason Aldean. I’d give the song even more weight if his voice had weight: his ethmoid tenor is placemat-thin, stranding him in a land neither growly nor high-and-lonesome. The handwringing of country gatekeepers is a major turnoff of mine; still, the song’s good, and general enough in its wishing to avoid obsolescence.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: Q: Why don’t they play the good old songs any more? A: Because they’re too busy playing the good new ones.
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: I’m fine with country music songs that are given titles before they’re given a tune, but Church’s call for salvation never fully coheres. The chorus is pitched perfectly for tent revival barnstorming — that is, the religion that arrives after the savior has been crucified and deified — but it sounds most like the rapturous return, complete with burning mountains and screaming. (But then, don’t tent revivals go in for that stuff anyway?) Either way, I understand renewal and I understand endtimes, but I don’t get it when the latter is supposed to act as the former.
[5]
Pete Baran: There is a bit of material that comedian Richard Herring does as part of his Christ On A Bike show where he notes the personal comparisons between himself and Jesus: “I am not saying that I am the second coming of our Lord — that is for others to say”. Eric Church’s track is a barnstorming musical version of that joke, and remarkably almost completely pulls it off.
[9]
Edward Okulicz: The brief hymnic opening is attention-grabbing, the riff is enormous, the knees-up it builds up to by the time the chorus rolls around is impressive, and Church’s growling is gruffly manful. If you can get past a few clunkers in the verses, and suspend your disbelief to how preposterous it is, the amalgalm of the spiritual and the terrestrial crunch of the song comes across as something a bit special.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: This track demands salt and earthiness. But if Eric Church’s voice has no saltiness, how can it be made salty? The guitar revival isn’t good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under the posturing afoot.
[5]
Anthony Easton: This moves so close to blasphemy, so wonderfully, delightfully close to blasphemy. From the first quoting of a beloved hymn, to claiming the prophetic voice (literal divine revelation), to the conflating of Christ with Hank Williams or Johnny Cash (and if one thinks about Johnny Cash’s decades long relationship with scripture and Christian scholarship; a relationship that stayed well away from blasphemy — he is shuffling faster and faster) and then makes these calls for musical purity even more biblical — while making it rock and roll; I mean he is musically quoting fire on the mountain, and he has the hand claps and choral repeating of an Anointed church service, but it’s Incorporated muscle deep into the body of a rock and roll text. So he is blaspheming the good Lord, and he is blaspheming country music, but sacramentalizing both at the same time. It is a viciously sophisticated work. Jeremy Spillman wrote “Sinners Like Me” as well as this; sort of proves how country music works as a set of theological interventions, and in the psycho-geography of the South, it becomes a kind of theology in itself. (“Sinners Like Me” is less interesting, it is also hews more closely to a Holiness (and that is intended to be capitalized) narrative than “Country Music Jesus” — which gets its energy from words and by music.
[10]
Iain Mew: This is meant to come across as completely ridiculous, right? I’m only a couple of better punchlines short of loving it, but at the same time have a nagging feeling that I may be missing the point.
[7]