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Album Of The Day: Learning To Breathe by Switchfoot
Released 25 years ago last month, this is the third album from Switchfoot, and though it's a quick 43 minutes, it's one of my favorite albums from them. Around this time, the band was still a three-piece officially, but the band started to have extra people on tour to fill out their sound. On this album, it's still very simple guitar, vocals, drums and bass on most songs. "I Dare You To Move" became a worldwide hit when it was re-recorded for their fourth album, but it first showed up here as the opening track. "Learning To Breathe" is another solid song about personal growth. "Poparazzi" and "The Loser" are really fun ones too. One of my all-time favorite Switchfoot songs is "Love Is The Movement", an excellent reminder that the most radical thing we can do is love others, plus the song has a bit of a Gospel flair and epic-ness to it. Speaking of epic, the closer "Living Is Simple" reminds us of the joys of life. Switchfoot has grown and expanded their sonic palette over the last 25 years, but I still love these early days as a bit more of a scrappy little rock band.
Release Year: 2000
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Album Of The Day: Tree63 by Tree63
Released 25 years ago this past Friday, this is the first album released in the USA by Tree63, a South African rock band with Christian lyrics. In the late '90s, the band was known as "Tree" and released two albums, Overflow and 63, and this album is a compilation of the best songs from those first two albums and the first album to use their new name, Tree63. If you didn't get the imported albums on CD like I did 25 years ago, you didn't hear the other songs, though all those old songs are currently available on streaming if you want to now access the classic songs you never heard. But the band took "Joy", "Look What You've Done" and "Worldwide" from the Overflow album and re-recorded them to sound more like the production style of their 63 album. And then half of the tracks from 63 were joined with those three new recordings to make this 10-song best of early Tree63 self-titled album that introduced the band to the North American market. John Ellis and his bandmates created great rock music with honest and sometimes worshipful lyrics. Songs like "1*0*1", "Treasure" and "Can I See Your Face?" are excellent rock music with quality Christian lyrics. If you're a fan of Tree63, I recommend you check out the original two albums and their 26 tracks, but this 10-track compilation is a great look at the band's early songs and works well together as an album.
Release Year: 2000
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Album Of The Day: Transform by Rebecca St. James
Released 25 years ago yesterday, this is the sixth studio album from Rebecca St. James and it might be my favorite album of hers. Though there's definitely a bit of rock guitars on this album, it's mostly a dance/pop album. Songs like "Reborn", "One" and "All Around Me" are Gospel lyrics with a heavy dance vibe. "Lean On" is even co-written with electronic rock band Earthsuit, though the programming seems to be provided by Producer Matt Bronleewe. Rebecca St. James was a bit more rock 'n' roll than some other female Christian music back in the '90s, and I was drawn to that, but even though this is mostly pop/dance, it still is an album I enjoy. The lyrics aren't particularly groundbreaking, but they present Christian views with quality music that still holds up, in my opinion.
Release Year: 2000
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Album Of The Day: Jars Of Clay by Jars Of Clay
Released 30 years ago this year and probably released 30 years ago today to mainstream US markets, this is the much-beloved debut of Jars of Clay. The band came out of the gate with some great songs and an acoustic-rock style that was unique at the time and has been imitated many times by bands since then. Some might not like the electronic drum loops, but I think it makes the album a bit of a unique release. There's also beautiful strings, fiddle work and even female vocals on a few songs. "Love Song For A Savior" may be their most-played song ever on Christian radio, and "Flood" got them onto non-Christian radio and MTV a bit at the time. But the best song of this album in my opinion is the 5-minute "Worlds Apart", a beautiful musical and poetic prayer of surrender to God. It's not my favorite Jars of Clay album, but it's their beginning and it's a top-notch album that continues to be a favorite so many years later.
If you want to hear me and a few others talk about this album for a while, Caleb invited me on his podcast and we talk about it for, wow, nearly 2 hours. It was a fun discussion and you can certainly find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Just look for "The Album Anniversary Podcast" and find the Jars Of Clay episode. Here is where to find the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Release Year: 1995
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Album Of The Day: Circle Slide by The Choir
Released 35 years ago today, this is the fifth studio album from The Choir, an atmospheric alternative rock band that has been active for over 40 years and is still recording new music. I got into The Choir only in the last decade or so, mostly through folks recommending their music and the band re-releasing and remastering their albums. 35 years after its release, this album is still a beautiful collection of instruments, not just your guitar, bass and drums but keyboards, saxophone, e-bow and even some female backing vocals. It sounds less dated that many albums from the early '90s, I'd say. I'm definitely a fan of an album where the opening track, the title track, is a 7-minute jam about heaven or something, and there's a 6-minute closing song too. It's quality rock from the band's earlier days and music that is still worth listening to today. (I need to listen to their other albums more too.)
Release Year: 1990
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Album Of The Day: Truth, Soul, Rock & Roll by The Elms
Released 23 years ago today, this is The Elms's second album and it cemented the band as one of my all-time favorite bands. Their first album was good, but on this album, they definitely dialed up the excellent guitar tones to 11 and I love it. From the opening riff of "Speaking In Tongues" to excellent rock songs like "You Saved Me" and "Come To Me", the guitars are definitely a highlight of this album for me. The whole band does a great job, though, with excellent bass, drums, and vocals as well. Lyrically, this band does a great job of writing love songs and being honest but positive about the struggles of life. This album was my personal soundtrack for many, many years and it continues to be played very regularly by me to this day. It was so much fun to see them play these songs live a month ago at a reunion show and meet other fans!
Release Year: 2002
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Album Of The Day: A Liturgy, A Legacy, & The Songs Of Rich Mullins by Andrew Peterson
I've done a bunch of live albums in the past week, and an album of Rich Mullins covers. So for today, we're going to mash both of those together! In September 2017, 20 years after the death of Rich Mullins, Andrew Peterson held a one-night-only concert at Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium. To celebrate the life of Rich Mullins, he and his friends along with some of Rich's friends recreated, note for note, Rich's finest album, the 1993 release A Liturgy, A Legacy & A Ragamuffin Band. I wasn't there, but I totally wished I could have made the trip to be there. It passed, and I thought we would only hear the legends of that evening. Then earlier this year, Andrew Peterson announced that his team had actually recorded it, it sounded great and they wanted to release it! Hooray! I ordered it on vinyl from their crowd-funding campaign, and I'm so looking forward on having the recording in hand. But for now, I have this digital version.
Released today to digital platforms, this is the full two-hour concert, complete with brief banter between songs and over a dozen covers of Rich Mullins favorites not on that album. Tracks 15-27 are an excellent, nearly note-for-note recreation of the A Liturgy... album, and it's done so well by all the musicians involved, it honestly does sound just as good as the studio album. There's not just drums, bass and guitars like a standard live show, but strings, flutes, and pretty much anything that was played on the original studio recording. Plus the audience knows all these songs well and joins in as a choir at just the right times. I think my favorite tracks currently are Jeremy Casella's version of "The Howling" and Andrew Osenga and the band rockin' out on Mark Heard's "How To Grow Up Big And Strong". Even if you're not familiar with that album, they sing a lot of well-known and lesser-known Rich Mullins songs from throughout his career. I'm going to love listening to this for many years, almost as much as Rich's album, honestly. Rich Mullins was a great songwriter, and I love that though he passed on to be with God, so many people honor his legacy and share it with all of us.
Release Year: 2025
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Album Of The Day: Live At The Knight by John Mark McMillan
Released 10 years ago this coming Thursday, this is the first live album by John Mark McMillan, and it's one of my favorite live recordings. Recorded in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina after the release of his excellent Borderland album, this features many songs from that album and his previous albums. John Mark McMillan's brand of rock (some might say soft rock) has many layers of instrumentation, and the stage on this recording was filled with many band members making layers of drums, guitars, bass and keys, plus even some horns and strings on a number of songs as well. His wife, Sarah McMillan, sings lead on a few songs from their You Are The Avalanche EP and does a great job. One of my favorite parts is when John Mark sings "Heart Won't Stop" from that EP and mixes in a cover of "Stand By Me" with some pounding guitar from James Duke. John Mark McMillan loves singing about his relationship with God, but he's also a musician making great music and lyrics about real life too, not just making what the church is looking for, and I really like his style. I like that my physical copy has a CD of a 78-minute version, plus a beautifully-filmed DVD of the full 95-minute concert, but you can listen to the whole version on streaming, thankfully. (I wish it was a Blu-Ray not a DVD, but it still sounds excellent and looks pretty good too.)
Release Year: 2015
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Album Of The Day: Bullet by Mat Kearney
Released 21 years ago today, Bullet is the debut album from Mat Kearney, a singer-songwriter who likes to blend genres. I first heard of Mat Kearney a few years before when he spit a verse on a hip-hop mixtape album, so I expected a bit of hip-hop on his debut. This album mixes Coldplay-esque pop with hip-hop and spoken word verses on songs like the title track, "Trainwreck" and "Girl America". On other songs, it's just Kearney crooning with an acoustic guitar and a few other instruments, singing beautiful love songs about life, and songs like "Call Me" and "Won't Back Down" show a musician that has lots of promise from the start and continues to write great music over 20 years later. 18 months after this album's release, he released Nothing Left To Lose on Columbia Records, which takes 6 songs from this album and adds 7 new ones, and that is now widely considered Kearney's debut album, as Bullet is not available on streaming and is mostly forgotten. So you might have to find a CD copy of this to give this album a listen.
Release Year: 2004
Album Of The Day: Live At Gruene Hall by Sixpence None The Richer
Sixpence None The Richer has been recording and performing for over 30 years (with some breaks in the past decade or two). Recorded a year ago today in their hometown of New Braunfels, Texas and released earlier this year, this is their first-ever live album. You might know them for their smash pop hit "Kiss Me", but they really are a rock/alternative band that has an excellent sound. This album shows that even 30+ years later, the band has staying power, performing both brand new songs as well as songs first recorded 30+ years ago. They also include covers of songs by Crowded House, Joni Mitchell, The La's and The Choir on this album, along with their many original songs. It's an excellent album that captures the band in the live setting and although the songs don't always sound exactly the same as the studio versions, they still sound great. Even if you think you only liked their old or new stuff, there's a good chance you will like this album.
Release Year: 2025
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