Sunday, November 22, 2009
A+E, Music, Reviews

Switchfoot

“HELLO HURRICANE”  (CREDENTIAL/ATLANTIC)

CCM. Those three letters are guaranteed to provoke a grimace on the face of most serious music fans. There’s good reason for that. Despite respected acts such as U2 and Bob Dylan dipping their multi-million-selling toes into Contemporary Christian Music, the genre remains the province of overly earnest post-punk rockers with one eye on salvation and the other on filling venues with the most generic, commercially driven by-the-numbers sounds this side of Matchbox 20.

   Certainly, San Diego’s Jesus-loving surfers Switchfoot understand this. That’s likely why there’s no mention of religion in the band’s most recent bio. Likewise, frontman Jon Foreman’s lyrics steer clear of the most obvious New Testament hooey. On its seventh album, Switchfoot decamps to a new label, records in its own studio (between group surfing sessions) and releases its first set of new music in three years.

    For the lighter-waving crowd, there’s plenty to get Bics flicking, with a surfeit of overblown ballads along the lines of “Always Yours” and “Sing it Out,” just a few of the not-so-subtle references to a higher power. Musically, this falls into mid-’80s U2 territory, as songs such as “Bullet Soul” peel off righteous, arena-filling guitar licks that might connect if Foreman’s heavy-handed lyrics didn’t get in the way.

   Tunes such as the swaying “Yet” click thanks to impressive melodies, but too much of “Hello Hurricane” falls into the sodden, waterlogged bombast that gives CCM a bad name. 2 STARS—Hal Horowitz