The Beautiful Letdown
This fourth studio album was released on February 26, 2003 by the major record label, Columbia Records/Red Ink. Meant to Live and Dare You to Move became top 20 singles and the album stayed aboard Billboard's top 200 albums chart for a long while.
The album won Album of the Year at the San Diego Music Awards and it was ranked #195 on Billboard's Hot 200 Albums of the Decade.
The Beautiful Letdown launched Switchfoot into the mainstream.
Personality
While this album retains much of the personality that Switchfoot established in the first three albums, I miss the goofiness and quirkiness of those earlier releases. This is a much more serious album. It's not dark or gloomy or anything, it just seems to take itself much more seriously than any of the previous releases.
The Track titled Gone retains a hint of Switchfoot's trademark quirky goofiness: "Today will soon be ... /Gone like Frank Sinatra, like Elvis and his mom/like Al Pachino's cash" but it's missing from all the other tracks and I'm a little disappointed. The album gets a 3/5 for personality.
Lyrics
This album continues and builds on the lyrical themes introduced in earlier albums. Meant to Live pulls no punches with its message: "We were meant to live for so much more" and This is Your Life reinforces it: "This is your life/Are you who you want to be?" The rest of the album continues in the same direction.
Elsewhere, The Beautiful Letdown confesses: "In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubt/I was trying so hard to fit in, fit in/until I found out/I don't belong here."
Gone is a bit of a goofy song but it has a serious message, opening with, "She told him she'd rather fix her makeup/than try to fix what's going on" and finishing with, "we are not infinite/we are not permanent ... /life is more than money, time was never money .../every moment that we borrow brings us closer to/the God who's not short of cash."
The album ends with "I want to see miracles/to see the world change ... /I'm singing Spirit, take me up in arms with you/and you're raising the dead in me."
So the tone of the album is more serious, but the themes are the same: faith, dependence, loss, living victoriously in a messed up world. I'll rate it at 4/5 because it's good but I miss the goofiness.
Sound
This album retains Switchfoot's unique sound, however, it's the most polished sounding album yet. The addition of Jerome Fontamillas to the lineup brings a layered guitar sound that works well with Switchfoot's sound. This album is more rocky and a little more aggressive sounding than previous albums but it has its share of quiet songs. What's noticeably absent is the lack of quirky goofiness, I know I sound like a broken record, but I really miss that! So, 4/5.
Conclusion
Not my favourite Switchfoot album, but a solid, cohesive release. It fits in well with the rest of Switchfoot's stuff. I'll give it a 4/5 RIAA certified platinum records.
Nothing is Sound
With this release, Switchfoot became, by far, my favourite band. Not just because of their fantastic music but because of the controversy they stirred up in the world of recording. (I love controversy.)
Nothing is Sound, the fifth studio album, was released September 13, 2005 and debuted as #3 on Billboard's top 200 chart.
About that controversy, I will shamelessly quote straight from the Wikipedia.org article: "The album was marred by major controversy over the inclusion of XCP copy protection distributed on all copies of the disc. This led to bassist Tim Foreman posting a detailed work-around on the band's website (which was promptly removed by Columbia Records). Nothing is Sound was at the forefront of the Sony BMG CD copy prevention scandal, which eventually led to the recall of all CD's that contained the protection." Jon Foreman later said that he felt the album was "tainted" by this scandal.
That's all I'll include here, but you can read all about it on Wikipedia, just search for "Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal".
Personality
This is probably Switchfoot's dimmest album yet. There's optimism and hope, but in Nothing is Sound, the world is a darker place. Surprisingly, though, this is a more lighthearted album than The Beautiful Letdown. I mean, there's plenty of serious stuff, but the overall tone is mostly optimistic. So, yes, there's the darkness and distressing depression of "everything is meaningless" but there's also optimism in songs like We Are One Tonight and Stars. The song The Shadow Proves the Sunshine insists on joy and hope even while the world is a broken place. So the darkness and depression here is not penetrating, it's only a reflection of the condition of the world. I'm giving it a 5/5.
Lyrics
I love the lyrics of The Shadow Proves the Sunshine: "Sunshine won't you be my mother" and "we are/crooked souls trying to stand up straight/dry eyes in the pouring rain when/the shadow proves the sunshine."
Like I said in the Personality section, there's a lot of darkness here, but the lyrics are mostly lighthearted and optimistic. One notable exception is the track, The Fatal Wound: "I am the crisis/I am the bitter end/I'm gonna gun this town/I am divided/I am the razor edge/there is no easing out//the sun of sorrow/staring down forever/with an aching view/disenchanted/let's go down together/with the fatal wound." I really don't know what to make of this song, but here's my theory: In this song, Jon Foreman sings about keeping on fighting even while there's no hope of victory or even of avoid a shattering defeat.
The themes here build mainly on those introduced in earlier albums, but deal with the darker sides. There is loneliness, social entropy, and the commercialization of sex. The song Easier than Love deals head on with the one issue that Switchfoot seems to have been dancing around ever since The Legend of Chin: the commercialization of sex. I'm glad they finally got that out, even though the song feels a little awkward.
Lyrically, this is my favourite album so far. 5/5.
Sound
This is Switchfoot's most intricately tailored album yet. It is densely layered, even more so than The Beautiful Letdown, thanks to the addition of touring guitarist Drew Shirley to the official lineup. It preserves Switchfoot's trademark sound and develops it. I really liked it. 5/5.
Conclusion
A complex recording, both by sound and lyrics. And my favourite to date. I don't quite like Stars and Easier than Love, they seem a little flat, but that doesn't take anything away from this hard-hitting album. I'll give it 5/5 fights to the death.
I'll be back tomorrow with Oh! Gravity.
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