16th July, 2006
LLOYD HARKNESS

"We’ve had a debate not that long ago or a discussion on Sight about intelligent design and I don’t know what to call this album other than to call it ‘intelligent rock’ - it’s good, solid, earthy, rock and it’s intelligent stuff."

I have been wowed by Switchfoot’s latest CD. I bought this back at Christmas time and it’s called Nothing is Sound which is really a contradiction because this is one very sound album. Some of you have who won’t have heard of Switchfoot may actually have recognise one of their songs because the AFL have used it in some of their advertising. What I really like about this album is that it is sound in lyrics and in music - in fact we’ve had a debate not that long ago or a discussion on Sight about intelligent design and I don’t know what to call this album other than to call it ‘intelligent rock’ - it’s good, solid, earthy, rock and it’s intelligent stuff. When you listen to the whole album it’s got the feeling of the Psalms and Ecclesiastes combined. There are songs in here that are about the emptiness of those things that are under the sun but the beauty of the album is that it comes at everything from the eternal perspective and so while, for example, the middle song is called The Blues that finishes with a great crescendo of voice saying ‘When the world caves in, when the world caves in’, it’s still a very upbeat album overall. The title of the CD comes from a song called Happy Is A Yuppie Word. One of its lines talks about ‘I’m running down a life that won’t cash out, everything fails, everything runs its course, I’m running down a life that won’t cash out' and it's just little phrases on this album that I find very clever. Another song that I particularly like in terms of lyrics is The Shadow Proves The Sunshine and this particular song talks about those times in our life when we’re going through the valley and, in that sense, it really reminds me of some of the psalms. As the title of the song suggests, even when you’re in the valley and there’s a shadow cast over you and you can’t see Christ, the Son, shining, He’s still always shining. The very fact that there’s a shadow cast over you tells you that He’s still there, He’s still shining, even though you may not feel it. So that’s why I say that this is an intelligent rock album. I recommend it.

Lloyd can be heard talking about Switchfoot on Sight's trial podcast. Click here to access the podcast...

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