Switchfoot is a band I've been long curious about. I know they have a tenuous connection to the Christian music machine and that at one time they were a pretty big deal. Heck, their 2000 release Learning to Breathe went gold when they were on Sparrow Records*, a smaller imprint without the benefit of corporate muscle outside the weird Christian bookstore model. Their next album, The Beautiful Letdown, was distributed to the great unwashed outside of the CCM bubble by SONY BMG back in 2003, and the band went triple platinum. Kind of a holy shit moment for them, I'm sure. A couple of years after that, Nothing Is Sound would be their highest-charting album on the Billboard 200, reaching #3, but the album would only go gold ... only, sheesh, most acts would love a gold record. As time went on, each album would sell fewer copies than the one before. They'd change labels a few times, and in 2021 interrobang would be their second album on Fantasy Records. I wonder if they asked John Fogerty what it was like to be on the label?
There's a goofy chart on the band's wiki page that shows a list of their studio albums, with selected chart positions and certifications. This is where I got my information, but honestly, there was a point on the chart where it just seemed to lose credibility. There are some pretty exact numbers that don't have a source that makes sense. My favourite is the figure beside interrobang - that lists the album sales at 3,000 copies. Um, no offence to Billy Bob Thornton, but his 2003 album The Edge of the World, which sold 5,000 copies, appears to be a bigger deal on paper than this album.
Who is Switchfoot? If you're a fan, you already know, but me ... I'm coming in dry. So let me open the gatefold and try and read the two-point font the jacket designer thought was a good idea (I have a magnifying glass, I can't read that shit).
Switchfoot is:
- Jon Foreman - vocals, guitar
- Tim Foreman - bass, vocals
- Chad Butler - drums ,vocals
- Jerome Fontamillas - keys, vocals
- Drew (Andrew) Shirley - guitar, vocals
The Foreman Brothers wrote the songs, and the album was produced by Tony Berg (back in '89 he produced Michael Penn's March, and as a bookend in 2021 he produced Taylor Swift's Red (Taylor's Version), which is kind of cool). The album was mixed by Tchad Blake, whose list of credits is about as long as my arm. This is a great-sounding record.
Anyways, this is all fun and games until someone loses an eye, and then it's a sport. The reality here is I have absolutely no point of reference with respect to the band, and listening to interrobang is all new to me. I'm cutting into fresh powder, and this is so much fun. Seriously, way more fun than I expected. I've been playing this off and on for over a week, and find myself humming some of the songs.
I will admit that I sort of had a preconception of what they'd sound like, and when "Beloved" opened the album, it was more or less what I expected. It's hard to explain. It's not really what I expected, but it fell into an anticipated sweet spot that just seemed to be new and familiar at the same time. I guess what I'm fumbling about trying to say is this is what I was hoping for.
One of the things I tend to do subconsciously is to stuff a band into a nicely fitted pigeonhole. Who does this sound like? Is it overt or subtle? Is it irritating or derivative? Does it matter? At this moment in time, interrobang is the be-all and end-all for me with respect to all things Switchfoot. It's a delicious introduction, and I've avoided streaming other albums to try to see where they started or how things have changed. This is where I am currently centred, and I have no qualms about staying here for a bit.
Getting back to the name-and-claim side of the ledger and the little hole I've hollowed out. Switchfoot is easy to peg while being slippery as snot in terms of nailing down. Dropping the needle, "Beloved" is a killer introduction, and at times I'm convinced that Jon Foreman is singing with cotton balls stuffed into his cheeks. If you mixed Ozzy-like diction and Chris Martin in a blender, the result is Jon's voice. It's not unpleasant, maybe a tad distracting the first time, but only the first time. Funny how you can't recreate a first impression ... you either reinforce it or you forget what it was all about and enjoy it for what it is.
"Lost Cause" is an earworm of the highest order, and I love how the Foreman Brothers rhyme "Cause" and "'Cause". It is so good. I keep thinking of Coldplay and Chris Martin, but honestly, let's put things in perspective. Switchfoot's debut dropped in '97, and Coldplay released Parachutes in the summer of 2000. That should put this to rest, but it's kind of hard to unhear ... like I said, this is my first time hearing these guys, and I'm still trying to smush them into a little box.
The band is killing it throughout the first side. I really liked "If I Were You", a really dark song wrapped in a delightfully sparkly song that just exudes bubbles and glitter. The song starts with "2020 enemies" and proceeds to go from there. It's a wicked little song that doesn't take a side but draws attention to our ability to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
If I were you
and you were me
would we still be doomed
to disagree
cause you'd be me
If I were you
and you'd never see
my point of view
It's a theme that runs through many of the songs on the first side. I suppose that's the meaning behind the exclamation mark. Shock or excitement. The closing track on the first side "The Bones of Us" is a haunting mid tempo track that seems to be searching for resolution and meaning. Or not. Heavy lifting in lyrics is one of those ear of the beholder things, and if I start looking for patterns in a wordy Rorschach test I'll soon be reading about dancing farting rainbow unicorns.
Oddly I kept hearing little musical nods I attributed to Daniel Amos. More specifically guitarist Drew Shirley's colour palate that seemed to be right out of the Greg Flesch handbook ... of course I suspect I'm completely full of digested food waste, but it's a fun comparison ... see also farting rainbow unicorns..
The album resolves on the decidedly Beatlesque "Electricity" that even seems to have a faux mellotron providing warbly electronic strings while drummer Chad Butler spends most of the song throwing in Ringo like tom fills. It's actually the odd duck stylistically on the album and it doesn't matter. The song is a simple (perhaps overly simplistic) resolution to the back and forth tension that ebbs and flows throughout the album. The idea that making some space for quiet is all that is needed to find common ground is delightfully naive and endearing, and more often that not true.
maybe we could just power down just you
and me
maybe we could make our own
maybe we could make our own electricity
I'll flip the record over and play it again ... something I've done many, many times over the last week or so. interrobang got me right in the feels, and honestly, I'm sort of surprised at how much this resonated with me. It's been a while since something new to me hit this hard. I suppose one of the inexplicable byproducts of getting old is how close to the surface my emotions are. It's not that it's hard to find the triggers; it's the fact that an album of essentially generic modern rock pushed so many of my buttons.
* Sparrow may have been a smaller label but they had Steve Taylor and Phil Keaggy on the roster back in the day among others ... Steve and Phil were (are?) a really big deal to me.
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