I don’t usually listen to contemporary Christian music (though I do have a soft spot for Jars of Clay), but I’ve been listening to some Derek Webb after being tipped off by a review of his new album at PopMatters. It’s pretty interesting stuff: an eclectic mix of electronica and pop at times a bit reminiscient of Radiohead. Apparently he’s also somewhat controversial because he says “shit” and that hating on gay people is wrong. Anybody else into this guy?
"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal
3 responses to “Derek Webb”
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His record label even forced him to accept a censored and an explicit version of the album because he said “shit”. He used to be part of a pretty good CCM band called Caedmon’s Call, which I listened to a few years ago. When I heard he was going solo I started following his career. He’s always been a favorite of mine – probably because it seems like we’ve followed a similar path. His early solo albums were fantastic expressions of Reformation theology. Simul justus et peccator, condemnations of legalism – that sort of thing. By far the best CCM I’d ever heard. I was headed out of fundamentalism and into Lutheranism at that time. The last couple of albums he’s been moving left politically and pointing out the failures of the religious right’s culture war. And I’ve been headed in the same direction. So it’s hard for me to be objective about him. He’s creatively expressed a lot of my own struggles.
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I’ve also been a fan in the past, though it’s been a long time since I’ve listened to him (just because I listen to Jazz almost exclusively these days). I do remember a song of his, ‘This Too Shall Be Made Right’ that I found very beautiful. Thanks for the mention, I’ll have to check out his newest.
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There was a while when Caedmon’s Call was my favorite band, and then a while where Derek Webb was my favorite songwriter, after he went solo. “She Must and Shall Go Free” came along near the height of my folk-rock phase, and I must have listened to it a hundred times or more. But I sort of lost interest as he wrote a whole series of songs that were written as confessions but were actually lists of things that Derek saw as problems with Christians in America. Which isn’t to say he was wrong, only that his lyrics were getting heavy-handed. But this latest one sounds interesting, and I might check it out at some point.
A Thinking Reed 
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