Today’s the day! Smalltown Poets is finally releasing their 8th studio album, and the first non-Christmas album since 2012’s EP, Under the New Sun. To prepare for the new release, I thought I’d list, and briefly “review”, my top 10 Smalltown Poets songs.
Another old favorite of mine, “Shame” by Crystavox, came up in my play list today. It’s a great song about the divide we make in our lives. On one side, we have our daily life, and on the other, we have our faith. At any rate, the chorus says this,
So many times we’ve crucified the gift God gave us all
So many times we magnify the things that make us fall
Over and over, we’ve pulled away in shame
Our work leaves out Jesus and He receives the blame
And I think He’s crying
The bridge tells us
It’s impossible to travel when we’ve thrown away the keys
We can not feed the forest until we fight our own disease
It’s a great reminder that we need to be serious about our faith, actively pursuing it every day, and to be on our guard against a careless, hypocritical lifestyle.
One of my favorite Relient K songs is “I So Hate Consequences,” and my favorite part of that song has to be the outro:
When I got tired of running from you
I stopped right there to catch my breath
There your words they caught my ears
You said, “I miss you son, come home”And my sins, they watched me leave
And in my heart I so believed
The love you felt for me was mine
The love I’d wished for all this timeAnd when the doors were closed
I heard no I told so’s
I said the words I knew you knew
Oh God, oh God I needed you
God all this time I needed you, I needed you.
Amen.
Recently, my church hosted a Hawk Nelson concert (which caused some heartburn for some in our congregation ;). The opening band was a Tulsa-based band called Capital Lights. While I enjoyed their set, it’s hard to get a good feel for a band when you hear them the first time at a concert, though I did think they did a better job than the second band, Run Kid Run. At any rate, I got to hear one of their songs on an Internet radio stream, and I have to say that I LOVE this band.
I only have a couple of tracks of theirs (because I’m a cheap jerk :), but I really, really like they’re sound. I’ll also admit that I haven’t studied their lyrics much, so I don’t what kind of depth they bring there, but I love the instruments, and their vocalist, with his clear tenor and occasional falsetto, is brilliant. They’re kind of a pop rock band, and I’ve heard comparisons to Jimmy Eat World and Green Day (see “Let the Little Lady Talk” and try to picture Billie Joe singing that), and I think those are probably accurate comparisons. If you’re looking for a new band and like distortion, power chords, and smartly written (if not ultimately depthless) lyrics, you should check these guys out1.
1Yes, I know I just linked to MySpace. Finding this page is what finally spurred me to post this. 🙂