Happy New Year!& the Relaunch of Music Spectrum:Celebrating 2007 witha Look Back at Todd Snider

After a brief hiatus during my move to a new position as Associate Pastor at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Brookfield, Wisconsin, Music Spectrum is back for 2008. You can expect 8-10 reviews each month taking a look at music from across the sound spectrum, often with an eye on how it might intersect with the Christian faith.

I hope you'll sign up to put Music Spectrum on your Google Reader or use the feed on your favorite reader (see sidebar).

If you have music that you'd like to see reviewed, please check my contact information for the new mailing address.

Thank you for all of your support as Music Spectrum enters it's fifth year!

Rock on!
Ben
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Todd Snider's Peace, Love and Anarchy (Rarities, B-Sides and Demos, Vol.1)

It’s the humor that grabs you on songs like “Nashville” and “Combover Blues” from Todd Snider’s odds-‘n’-sods collection, Peace, Love and Anarchy (Rarities, B-Sides and Demos, Vol.1). The album even starts with Snider’s chuckling intro for “Nashville.” He’s witty, intelligent, and a twangy, country, folkie.

Yet, Snider can also pin you back in your seat with a healthy melancholy. You could sing the words of “Amazing Grace” to the tune and rhythm of “Feel Like I’m Falling in Love,” which recalls the Gospel hymn with Snider’s theme and the line, “I'm not afraid of my heart breaking/I have paid that price before/All my mistakes/Add up to nothing.”

One step further and Snider writes his own Gospel tune with “I Will Not Go Hungry” (“I will not walk out on your highway/I will not wonder where I'll sleep/I know I will not go hungry/The day that Jesus comes for me”) which works to speak the Good News because of that melancholic sweetness.

The humor isn’t without introspection. “Combover Blues” hits home in its reflections about age when Snider says, “It just blows my mind to hear myself say/‘God, what's the matter with these kids today?/This crap they play's just way too loud and rude.’” Whether or not you were a smoker or a rocker when you were younger, you know what he means that certain things don’t have the same appeal or rush as you outgrow them.

With a John Gorka sound, Snider sings about going to the doctor on “Some Things Are” with his same humor (“The doctor will see you now is not what that means/It's a smaller room with even less magazines”) even as he comes to the conclusion that the medical answer doesn’t change anything about love and family.

Finally, Snider’s treatment of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Stoney” hits a Greg Brown feel for this song about an old busker. The tale of Stoney leads to the conclusion that he’s just a liar. But despite the untruth of his stories, Stoney kept everyone going with his “old concertina” that’s “all beat up and she played like hell,/Until you got him started singing those Gospel songs.”

Could it be that Stoney is a prophet who speaks more truth in those Gospel songs than anyone guessed? The speaker doubts all of Stoney’s stories, but in the end, does he also doubt Stoney’s Gospel songs and their effect? Snider’s version makes you wonder if Snider himself isn’t that old busker.

Todd Snider
OhBoy Records