Who remembers the rock scene of the 2000s? If you’re a millennial, you probably do. Maybe you even went through the quintessential angsty punk-rock phase. You know, skin-tight v-necks, studded belts from Rue 21, bangs over one eye (maybe even bleached.) Almost emo, but not quite. And if your mom would have let you have a tattoo sleeve at fourteen, you would have.
Those rock bands have a specific sound to them now. Their voices sound like boy bands gone rogue (because that’s essentially what they all were.) You desperately wanted to play guitar so you could play along to those chugging riffs. Songs would be punctuated either by intense whispering or screaming. If you were a little more emo, you probably clung to Evanescence, Panic! At the Disco, and My Chemical Romance. If you were a Christian but still wanted to be considered edgy, you leaned toward Switchfoot, Relient K, Family Force 5, and Red for good measure.
My angsty teenage phase happened when I was almost twenty. That’s when I realized there were some punk rock bands of the 00s that I never listened to, because I never went through a punk rock phase (remember, I listened to Broadway showtunes and film scores.) It started with bands like Jimmy Eat World and The Classic Crime, what you might call low-tier punk rock, more alt than anything. Then I slid into more niche bands like Silverstein, Chevelle, and The Almost.
In all honesty, I don’t like most of those bands that much anymore. Their sound is way too gimmicky. Some of them, like Thrice, Muse, and Emery have some staying power for me. A lot of bands have grown out of their punk rock phase (like Panic and Fall Out Boy) and have matured into their own sound or have just turned to poppier sounds.
And there’s one that far surpasses them all in my book.
Day Nineteen: (*Fin) – Anberlin
In my experience, bands of the mid-thousands have really vague song titles that are also complete sentences. Like “There is no Mathematics to Love and Loss.” Or my favorite, “Audrey, Start the Revolution!” Anberlin crafted both of those beauties. Once a high school garage band, Anberlin hit their high notes on the 2000s rock scene. The frontman, Stephen Christian, was the bastion of the group from 1999 until their breakup in 2014. His voice is just unique and melancholy enough to set itself apart from the boy-band sound of some of his contemporaries. But much of their music is very much indicative of that punky aesthetic – lyrics about miscommunication in love, angsty youth reflection, and several songs with a woman’s name as the title (“Adelaide,” “Dance Dance Christa Paffgen,” and the Audrey one, obviously.)
But Anberlin is unique to me in that it’s unique in that era of music. There’s plenty of angsty love songs, but they also get pretty serious…about faith. (I know I like talking about this.) Stephen Christian is, well, a Christian, and though Anberlin is not a specifically Christian band, they toy with ideas of faith in some of their songs.
One of their best received albums was Cities in 2007. They were growing into a more mature sound and owning themselves as an established band. And they went beyond singing tired love songs.
The last track of Cities is the longest they’ve ever written, clocking in at 8’53”. It’s titled “(*Fin,)” mirroring the first track entitled “(Debut.)” And its message is clear – we are all hypocrites.
Growing up in the church, Christian had several specific experiences that soured his upbringing and relationship with God. The song is a departure from their usual heavy rock sound. It starts very exposed and folksy as Christian tells four separate stories from his church background:
Feels like you’re miles from here
In other towns with lesser names
Where the unholy ghost doesn’t tell
William or Mary exactly what they want to hear
Christian is singing about a couple unable to conceive, no matter how hard they try and pray. They never hear what they want. Stories like this evidently made the young Christian angry at God.
Remember the house on Ridge Road
Told you and the Devil to both just leave me alone
This bleeds into Christian’s fluid chorus, which seems to change after each verse.
I am the patron saint of lost causes
Aren’t we all to you just near lost causes?
Aren’t we all to you just lost
The second story seems to sting a bit more. He tells of a missionary who left his wife and family to do God’s work elsewhere. Christian is embittered by this, for good reason. Why did the missionary leave his most important work at home if not for selfish gains and not the glory of God?
What if you gained the whole world?
You’ve already lost four little souls from your life
Widows and orphans aren’t hard to find
They’re home missing Daddy
Who’s saving the abandoned tonight
It stings, and it hits home. How often do we do good things simply for our own good? The answer is a lot. It’s easy to have our own savior complex – I did this for all these people, for this person, but I actually just did it for me. But what about the things that God has put right in front of your path, the less glamorous things, like raising a family or attending church every Sunday?
The fourth story is a bit more ambiguous. Christian sings of two people named Billy and Timothy. Billy is evidently a preist who used to visit Stephen as a child but did not answer his questions about faith. Billy made him more unsure of his faith based on how Billy lived his life – accummulating endless wealth and preaching something like a prosperity Gospel.
Billy, don’t you understand?
Timothy stood as long as he could
And now you made his faith disappear
More like a magician and less like a man of the cloth
Christian’s point is clear by now: all of us fall short. “We’re no better, you’ll see,” he cries, “Just all of us, the lost causes.” At this point, a children’s choir interjects with a repeated chorus, “Patron saint, are we all lost like you?”
At this point, the song seems pretty hopeless. What are we to do when the people we look up to fail? Who’s left? Christian describes this song as his own Psalm (hey, Psalmic worship, we’ve talked about this.) Some Psalms are praise, and some are David’s pleas to God. Christian describes this as his plea to God for help.
The fourth verse, Christian claims, was totally improvised during recording, and was one of the most spiritual experiences of his life. Take a look:
Please God take this and all
Then grace takes me to a place
Of the father you never had
Bending and breaking and tearing apart
This is not heaven this is my Hell
This definitely isn’t conventional worship. But don’t be fooled, it is worship in its own right. In order to approach God, we must first admit that we need God. And who better to call out to in our hour of need than Him? (*Fin) is about Christian’s faith journey, and no two journeys to faith are alike. Yours might be just as rocky as his.
But if a punky boy band can find peace in Christ, then so can you.
Audrey D. DeBoer 