Music: Still Crooked by Crooked Still

This is an incredible album… if you like progressive/alternative bluegrass. There’s plenty of fiddle and banjo, but absolutely no twang. Aoife O’Donovan’s vocals are incredibly smooth and captivating. Combine those smooth vocals with solid instrumentation on banjo, cello, and fiddle… you’ve got some beautiful arrangements and stunning sounds.

I’m a huge fan of Nickel Creek, but Crooked Still gives them a big run for their money… right now at least, Still Crooked is my new favorite bluegrass album. Granted… I have very few favorites in the bluegrass variety since I’m a bluegrass neophyte. For years, I was pretty sure I hated bluegrass, but then I encountered Nickel Creek and the Avett Brothers and I thought to myself that this is not the bluegrass I was familiar with. And, well, it isn’t… it’s “progressive” or “alternative” as some call it.

Honestly, I think we could just call it newgrass or contemporary bluegrass - these are all young artists keeping a good bit of the old, but bringing in some great chord progressions, instrumental combos, and compelling vocals. Still Crooked offers all of this with striking variety. There’s some numbers that can almost pass for blues, some that can almost pass for soft rock or jazz, and some that are most certainly folk-oriented. With that variety - they still hold it together and never sound like a different band.

Even if you aren’t a bluegrass fan, I would recommend you give these folks a listen. It’s good stuff.

Note: They do some old-time gospel on this album, but this is not an album inside the Christian music bubble. Some great stuff on here.

Music: The Ringing Bell by Derek Webb

With Mockingbird, Derek Webb already entrnched himself as an artist willing to ask hard (and some would say controversial) questions. With this CD, Webb has continued in this same vein and continues to ask some hard questions that challenge the typical Christian view of, well, just about anything.

Webb has called this his first “rock” album and he’s right as long as you hearken back to the sound of the British Invasion in the 60s. For many today, this is not exactly the sound they conjure up when the term “rock and roll” are spoken. Still, it’s a great sound and it fits his voice and poetry quite well. It’s a nice departure from the folk-oriented style he’s so well-known for.

Covering topics ranging from being a prisoner to our own closed minds (”The End”) to the culmination of Christ’s glory (”This Too Shall Be Made Right”), Webb weaves a great set of songs that are designed to challenge as well as entertain. My favorite songs are the songs dealing with harder hitting issues and my least favorite are the love songs - no surprises there. The politically charged “Savior on Capitol Hill” and “Love That’s Stronger Than Our Fear” will surely raise some eyebrows, but they both address issues that most Christian artists are afraid to even touch in fear that they might upset the party line. After all, Christian = Republican, right? I told you I liked the harder hitting songs.

All in all, I truly enjoy this album with my foremost complaint being its length… it’s too short. At just slightly over 30 minutes, this album recycles itself too quickly in a CD player. Other than that small complaint, I find much to like on this album and heartily recommend it. It’s probably Derek’s strongest album yet.

Book: Being Human by Macaulay and Barrs

This book written in the 1970s is a Scripture-filled paradigmatic revolution for the missionally-minded Christian. (Wow - sorry about that… but really, all those big words mean something.) The book is written by two alums of L’Abri and written very much in the spirit of the teachings of Francis Schaeffer. What Barrs and Macaulay do is to make Schaeffer-esque concepts more approachable (many who have attempted to read some of Schaeffer’s work have found his writing a bit daunting). They also do something that is somewhat lacking in Schaeffer’s writings… Being Human is heavy with Scriptural references. Seeking to bring the concepts of human spirituality into focus, they reference much of what the Bible has to say about the nature of humanity.

Tracing the history of Christian thought regarding human spirituality they bring two ways of looking at the human equation: 1) the Biblical view and 2) the Platonic view. They do an apt job of tracing these two concepts and proving how the Platonic view has infected the Christian subculture. Another L’abri alum, Nancy Pearcey, penned the book Total Truth which also deals with the same false dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual. While Pearcey’s book deals with worldview, Macauley and Barrs deal with humanness.

Having read Pearcey’s book, I thought I was well-prepared to just nod my head through the book with few experiences that would be revelatory… I was mistaken. In almost every chapter, preconceptions I didn’t know I had began to surface and I was challenged to look much deeper at how I viewed my fellow man - Christian or not. I was stunned to find such deep prejudgment about people within me. My mind was opened to recognizing what it means that man was created in “the image of God” and how that should affect the way I think.

I highly recommend this book as serious reading for anyone who is interested in having their own preconceptions laid bare - what surprised me was that I was pretty sure I’d already had my major paradigm shift… this book proved just how deeply my incorrect view of human spirituality was ingrained.