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Album Of The Day: Point #1 by Chevelle

Album Art of Chevelle's Point #1 album - On a black background, the middle is a light green color and looks like either a green marble or some sort of rug, though there's dark gouges/cracks in it and a few holes. On the left edge there is the tops of two feet poking into the frame, which is why I think it's a bit of floor, carpet, or maybe a bathtub? With the rest of it black, it's hard to tell. Printed above the green in a darker green text is the band's name, with the second 'e' turned around to mirror the 'e' on the other side of the 'v'. And in the blackness in the bottom left is printed the album title in small, white text.

Released 27 years ago today, this is the first album by Chevelle, a hard rock/metal band by two brothers for almost 30 years now, though actually at this moment a third brother was playing bass too. This album really hits hard, and by that I mean that this three-piece creates a lot of noise and lets out a lot of anger on this album. Guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter Pete Loeffler passionately sings and sometimes screams poetic lyrics trying to understand the complexities of life and questioning the things he's been taught. The highlight for me is still the title track which opens the album with six minutes of excellent metal, including a two-minute intro. But it doesn't stop from there; throughout it's 42 minutes of grunge-y guitars with thundering bass and drums as well as Pete's dynamic vocals. Producer Steve Albini and Chevelle kept the instrumentation and the production sparse and it keeps the energy up and probably sounds more like their live show, which I think was a very good choice for this band's debut. The band has continued to make music, but I haven't listened to much of their music except for this album in the last 20 years, honestly, as I found their few albums after this less and less compelling to me personally.

Release Year: 1999
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Album Of The Day: Pro Pain by Mars ILL

Album Art of Mars ILL's Pro Pain album - A drawing of a two-door sedan car in a crash test setting, with the whole front of the car crumpled and mid-explosion. On top of the line drawing is painted blues, yellows and reds in various large swaths of color, with the paint not hitting the white edges. In the top left it says 'manchild and dust' in small black text, then the artist name in much larger white text with a black outline. At the bottom left, the album title is printed in brighter colors, with a white outline. In the bottom right is a Mars ILL word mark, where the 'ILL' kinda becomes part of the letter 'm'.

"Twenty years from right now my words are still grabbing your nature" Released 20 years ago tomorrow, this is the third major studio album by Atlanta hip-hop duo Mars ILL. DJ Dust puts together intricate hip-hop beds from classic records and other sources, and I love how each time I hear something new I missed on previous listens. Emcee ManChild does fast-moving rap about life, love and the rap game. Mars ILL is my favorite rap/hip-hop artist of all time, and their three albums are so, so fun to listen to. Yes, it's a bit of an underground/indie rap sound, but it's so well-made and the words and music have so much meaning to them. These two spent about 10 years in the underground hip-hop scene and this album was their final major release, as they moved on to other creative and professional pursuits, and only a few new songs have been released by them since. Seriously, if you like rap at all, check this duo out and I hope you like it.

Release Year: 2006
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Album Of The Day: Films For Radio by Over The Rhine

Album Art of Over The Rhine's Films For Radio album - A color photo of a woman wearing a bright red coat with her hands in the pockets takes up most of the space. It looks like she is sitting and her hands are stuffed in the pockets, though we cannot see her shoulders, head or legs. It's mostly just a lot of folds of the coat in light and shadow, with a bit of white skin on the left arm just outside the pocket. On top of the photo is printed in large, light gold text the band's name on the left side. At the top, there's a large horizontal black space above the photo, and printed right above the photo is the album title in a gold, handwriting-style script.

"Everybody's story is more / Interesting than mine / It took me twenty-some-odd-years / To see I'd been born blind" Released 25 years ago last month, this is the sixth studio album by Over The Rhine. This folk duo is at their most rock 'n' roll on this album with a full backing band and top-notch production. Most of these songs are songs of love, from "The World Can Wait" to "The Body Is A Stairway Of Skin". There's also talk of the divine as well on songs like "I Radio Heaven", "Give Me Strength", and the epic 8-minute mid-album track "Little Blue River/In The Garden". Films For Radio is beautiful poetry set to excellent folk/rock music by seasoned musicians, one of the band's best releases, and it's well worth a listen.

Release Year: 2001
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Album Of The Day: Clouds Echo In Blue by Clouds Echo In Blue

Album Art of Clouds Echo In Blue's self-titled album - A color photo of some branches and some shriveled, brown bits of flowers and leaves hanging off those branches, with a very out-of-focus landscape in the area behind these. Towards the top, printed in white, lowercase text is the band name, with the word 'echo' repeated above and below mostly transparent to the background, for a ghostly echo effect.

Released 15 years ago earlier this month, this is an ambient, instrumental music album by Derri Daugherty, lead singer of The Choir and member of The Lost Dogs and other bands. It's about 40 minutes of instrumental rock with a mostly quiet, reflective tone. It's the kind of stuff I like to have on in the background while reading a book, though it's also engaging enough to listen to as the focus too. It's definitely different than most of Derri's other work, but I really like it.

Release Year: 2011
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Album Of The Day: The Hunger by Seven Day Jesus

Album Art of Seven Day Jesus's The Hunger album - On an off-white background, a grainy photo of some colors of yellow, blue and red are shown. It can't tell if it's a blurry photo of some paint, or maybe even outer space or something, it's just so distorted and blurry. Around the photo is a very rough, black background which seems hand-drawn. In the very middle, on top of the photo is printed the band's name in white, all-lowercase text in a typewriter font. And towards the bottom of the photo, the album title is printed in a thinner, taller font in yellow.

Released 30 years ago yesterday, this is the debut album from Christian rock band Seven Day Jesus. Less than two years later they would release a much more poppy album on a bigger record label, but on this album, the band was squarely in the world of mid-'90s grunge rock. The guitars are loud and distorted and it's a well-made record from a band that shows lots of promise. Lead singer Brian McSweeney's lyrics are those of a young Christian struggling to follow God and find his role in the world. I was first introduced to the band during their second album which I still like better, but there are many who liked this one more and saw that second album as too much of departure in style. Both albums do have the same grunge rock sound throughout, but their second, self-titled album definitely had catchy hooks and more of a pop-rock sensibility. No matter which you like better, if you like '90s Christian rock, check out this short-lived band.

Release Year: 1996
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Album Of The Day: Old Church Basement by Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music

Album Art of Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music's Old Church Basement album - Sitting on a floor in a darkly lit, empty room, the only source of light is an overhead projector box that has s light inside and spills out light from the top, projecting whatever is on the clear plastic sheets placed on top of it onto a wall via a mirror hanging above it. This mostly obsolete technology used to be used in schools for lessons and at churches for communal music before projectors and larger screens became economical. The light from the project in this photo doesn't really illuminate anything visible; it seems the room is a bit smoky, probably for a cool image effect.

"The most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday." - James Baldwin & others before him. This is still a problem today in most churches across America; we join churches that think and look like we do. There's not many churches that do this well, but I'm happy to find that some are trying, and modern worship albums like this seem to make the case that it can work sometimes. Released 5 years ago this coming Thursday, this is the 15th album from Elevation Worship and the third album from Maverick City Music. This recording captures nearly two hours of live music at Elevation Church from these two church worship collectives based out of Charlotte and Atlanta coming together. These groups manage to infuse the mostly white, American modern worship sound with a bit of black Gospel feel, and the videos of the recording session shows a melting pot of races and ages both in the combined bands and worshiping in the congregation. A deep bench of worship leaders lead the crowd in songs and also sometimes share their personal stories during their praise to God. At 8⅔ minutes per song on average, there's lots of impromptu praise breaking out throughout and these songs are certainly not designed to be radio singles. I'm still not sure I am comfortable with the slickly-produced, arena rock style of the megachurches in America today like this, but I like the fusion of musical styles here and this album is a pretty good listen. On the other hand, it's a very long album and there's mostly slower songs.

Release Year: 2021
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Album Of The Day: All The Hype Money Can Buy by Five Iron Frenzy

Album Art of Five Iron Frenzy's All The Hype Money Can Buy album - In the middle, a brightly colored print of a man jumping and holding a basketball over his head is shown with a large, black border. The same image is repeated six more times horizontally across the backdrop, with minor variations in the coloring, though the copies are only faded into the background. The background is mostly orange, with lines of green, purple, red and aqua blue near the bottom. To the right of the person's legs and above the colored stripes on the right is the album title in black all-caps, with 'Hype' bigger than the other words. Across the top is printed in large, red letters the band name with white and black borders. Around the edge is a red border with white edges.

Released 26 years ago today, this is the third album from ska/punk band Five Iron Frenzy. This Denver-based punk band with horns has never been a band I've really listened to a lot, but I've always had friends who were big fans and I've always respected them a lot. So it's been fun to give them a closer listen, mostly decades after their albums released. Like most ska/punk bands, these songs are short, so 14 songs is only 45 minutes. But it's a fun, driving run of an album, and a close listen to the lyrics finds some interesting things that you do not expect from a band distributed to Christian bookstores. Songs like "World Without End" definitely include lyrics of praise to God, but many other songs deftly critique much of American Christianity's main tenets: capitalism, consumerism and creating a safe sub-culture. There's also some references to American Christianity's checkered past on loving your neighbor and predicting a grim future if changes are not made. But there's also lots of humor and fun in here too, with songs like "Phantom Mullet", "You Probably Shouldn't Move Here", and funny lines throughout the songs. It's a solid album of ska music, and I should have checked out this band a lot earlier. I saw them play their 2003 farewell tour, but I get to see them live for the second time tonight and I'm looking forward to it.

Release Year: 2000
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Album Of The Day: Full Plates Mixtape 002 by DJ Maj

Album Art of DJ Maj's Full Plates Mixtape 002 album - A mostly black background with, on the right, a black-and-white, low-color photo of a young black man looking up towards a camera above him, with the camera up close to his face. He's lit from the right and there's a blue hue to the photo. In the blackness on the left side, it says the artist name in big white letters at the top, with the album title in smaller green letters below. Down the left side, it has a list of all the artists featured and a line illustration of two turntables below that.

Released 25 years ago today, this is the second mixtape album from DJ Maj, the long-time DJ for TobyMac's live show. On this album, DJ Maj has a who's who of Christian hip-hop in this 67-minute mix of mostly new songs. Maj gets to show off his turntable skills in spots and talks about himself a bit, but mostly just keeps the party going and the guests flowing. John Reuben and Playdough do a freestyle, and Mat Kearney does a verse a full 3 years before his debut album was released. Some favorites are "Shouldna Done It" by GRITS, "What's My Name" by New Breed, "Deception" by Pigeon John, "All That It Takes" by The Procussions, and of course "Street Credibility" by Mars ILL. To some extent, it's a solid sampler of hip-hop from 2001 mixed by a solid DJ and it's an excellent listen that I enjoy regularly even to this day. Sadly, it looks like this fun album is not on streaming like many multi-artist collaborations from this era, but it does seem to be on the Gotee Records SoundCloud page.

Release Year: 2001
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Album Of The Day: My Jesus by Anne Wilson

Album Art of Anne Wilson's My Jesus album - A color photo of a young, white woman with shoulder-length blond hair standing in some brown grass and leaves with a pond behind her and a tree with brown leaves to the right, and off in the distance is a brown grass field and a line of trees before the horizon. The sky is a bright grey, not blue, so seems to be a thick layer of clouds. The woman is standing in the foreground with a golden brown, frilly dress on and holding an acoustic guitar. In the top left, printed above the sky is the artist's name in large gold letters with fancy capitals on each first letter and then much smaller below is the album title.

I remember about 20 years ago one of my relatives asked me why there was no "Christian" country music artists. I responded with a few thoughts he didn't like, such as "CCM artists are a bit country already" and "most country artists already are Christian to some extent, some more than others." Now I have a bit more respect for country artists and occasionally listen to this genre, so maybe I could answer it better now. But it seems like the Christian music industry, now a ghostly shadow of what it once was, finally had a label that decided to sign a country artist recently. Released 4 years ago yesterday, this is the first album from Anne Wilson, one of the first country artists on a major Christian music label, in this case Sparrow Records aka Capitol Christian Music Group. It sounds to me like some decent Nashville country that is also a bit poppy with a lot of Jesus messages in the lyrics. Songs like the title track highlight her energy and her excellent vocals, and on this album there's two versions, one with Crowder on the end. There's also a song featuring Hillary Scott that honors the "Mamas" in our lives. Do I love this album? Not really, no. It's not bad but it's not really my style. But I listen to it on occasion; it's not too bad and is pretty up-tempo, so if it sounds like something that is up your alley, maybe you should check it out.

Release Year: 2022
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Album Of The Day: CHRISTIANsongs by Joy Electric

Album Art of Joy Electric's CHRISTIANsongs album - A color photo of two white men in bright red suits on a white background. Both have fairly short, brown hair and sideburns, and the one on the left is holding a keytar. Neither of them are looking at the camera and are looking in different directions. About 2/3 of the way down vertically the band name is printed horizontally across the photo in large black text. In the bottom left corner, printed above the white in much smaller red text is the album title, 'CHRISTIANsongs'.

Released 27 years ago yesterday, this is the fourth album from Joy Electric, the long-time electronic band primarily composed of Ronnie Martin. Ronnie builds whole musical landscapes with his synthesizers and sings over them, and usually they are very poetic, sometimes fairy tale stories, and there's definitely a bit of that on this album too. But as the album title might suggest, Ronnie wears his Christian faith on his sleeve for this album. As usual, it's synthesizer-driven pop with a bit of a punk ethos, but songs like "Children Of The Lord" and "Lift Up Your Hearts" have lyrics that are more overtly Christian and might be played on Christian radio at the time. Even a cover of a Keith Green song is included on this album. There's definitely a bunch of songs that are less "Christian" and just more normal Joy Electric, like "Disco For A Ride", "Synthesized I Want You Synthesized" and "I Sing Electric". It's a fun album and maybe one of their more accessible releases, in my opinion.

Release Year: 1999
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