pensiveanyway I've been listening to this band 16 Horsepower and they do these kind of swampy hot and humid runaway train wreck songs with lyrics that in any other musical setting would disturb me greatly because they are quite christian.
but the interesting thing about them is not that this guy is singing about jesus but that he is singing about jesus with a certain sort of despair and horror as though desperately trying to sing god into being in very uncooperative circumstances and I wonder what this stands in for as the center of the music sounds permeated by absence and loss.
on the other hand a lyric like "if I die by your hand / I have a home in gloryland" is frightening in the violent lengths it is willing to risk by virtue of its assurance of eternal life even as it seems conscious of and appalled by its own violence.
that last I think is the paradox that has my attention.
