Punk Folk: O'Neill and Wean's You Are Beautiful EP

“Hmmm, is that what good singers do? Yeaah,” are the Billy O’Neill’s opening words as Dan Wean strums an already earnest acoustic guitar on the duo’s You Are Beautiful EP. It’s the kind of self-conscious humor that could be coming from Jason Mraz, but with O’Neill and Wean you’re really just at the small club watching these two guys jam out some grooving folk rock. Watch the video available at their Webpage, and you’ll see what I mean.

O’Neill (Oh! My God) and Dan Wean (Easy Tiger) create something that’s a cross between’s Mraz’s singer/songwriter humor funk, Hamell on Trial’s punk folk, David Bazan’s frontal lobe attack, and Jason Anderson’s community folk. Wean bends the strings of an acoustic guitar on “Breakdown” that unleashes more sonic energy than the lone guitar instrumentation would suggest.

“Mona” is layered with electric guitars and percussion with a hard rocking drive, but that’s just a response to where the real drive that comes from O’Neill’s vocals that reach for Lenny Kravitz funk and Wean’s acoustic guitar that does a city pounding beat. Meanwhile, O’Neill’s plays the bar idiot picking up Mona while showing that he cares nothing about her—even having trouble remembering her name.

Contrary to what O’Neill and Wean might expect, I really appreciate “Son of God.” If I assume that Jesus Himself is singing the song, it is difficult to imagine the Son of God using vulgar language. However, the sentiment that the song expresses in phrases like “I am the Son of the God/But nobody buys it,” seems to capture reality of what Jesus faced as He preached. The song carries frustration—a frustration seen in God back even in the Old Testament as His people didn’t believe and follow Him. With its intensity, the song also shakes off the doubters, just as Jesus didn’t let His detractors alter His mission.

While I wouldn’t use it in certain settings, the song’s certainly an example of how even those who appear to be counter what the Church preaches can actually stumble onto ways of explaining the truth.

If you’re ready to take another step in seeing O’Neill and Wean speak these truths that have spiritual weight, take the last track—a slow, darker, brooding tune called “Human Condition.”

I say the right things because I know the human condition
Said I feel the wrong things because I am the human condition
I am compensating all the time
I am compensating all the time

I want to love you because I know that you need me
But I’m afraid of you because I know I need you
I am suiciding all the time
I am suiciding all the time

I think twice before I talk because I know that I’m a fool
Sometimes I’m fool for fearing what I might say
I am deviating all the time
I am deviating all the time

I am cold because I don’t come to your door
But you are cold because you don’t demand my warmth
I could love me so completely if I were someone else
You could love me completely if I was just myself.

Yes, it works more as a love song between two people, but if you interpret it as being addressed to God, it yields quite a lot of heartfelt questions about a relationship with the Lord. We fake our words, because we know the human condition of being sinful, but because of our sin, the truth is we feel the wrong things on the inside. In front of God, we’re compensating all the time, pretending to be something we’re not.

We want to love God, because we know He wants to take us into His kingdom. Yet, we’re scared of Him when we’re aware of how much we need God. We kill our souls by running away from Him.

While it is important to watch what we say, we end up never saying anything to God, afraid our prayers might be wrong. Instead, we deviate, let ourselves be distracted from our conversations with the Lord.

When we don’t come to knock at the door, we stand outside cold, because we’re not with Jesus. Yet, it feels like Jesus is cold—emotionless—in the way He can exist without me. We have trouble accepting ourselves knowing our own faults, but if we are just honest with God—even honest about our human condition of sin—God will completely love us.

Thanks to O’Neill and Wean for the review CD. Lyrics © 2006 O’Neill & Wean Songs (ASCAP).