My Top 40 Albums - #5

#5
Steven Curtis Chapman - "Signs of Life"

Year: 1996
Label: Sparrow
Favorite songs: Lord of the Dance, Rubber Meets the Road, Children of the Burning Heart, Only Natural, Signs of Life
Lyric sample: "Come in base I've landed my ship on a planet here in space / This is the one they say is inhabited by the human race / And I'm going out to look around and see what's here / And I'll tell you what I find / Confirmation on the inhabitants, they're running everywhere / Their technology is beyond what I've seen anywhere / But I'm trying to communicate and they don't hear me / Seems like for all I'm finding I can't find the most important thing"

As a person who enjoys lists, I've made quite a few of them in my life. Favorite fast food restaurants, best rollercoasters at King's Island, top 100 albums, etc. I gleefully engage in conversation about how one thing stacks up against other, similar things. Maybe it's a little bit of OCD in wanting to see neat, organized lists. Maybe it's the control freak in me trying to control my world by reducing complex questions to simple matters of better and best. Or maybe it's just an attempt to know myself and what I like. I have a favorite food, a favorite color, a favorite animal, a favorite day of the week; but the one list I could never make was that of my favorite songs. I've always found it too daunting a task. Aside from the fact that I will be singing something different every day of the week, there are just so many songs! Millions have been written and I've probably heard tens of thousands of them in my lifetime. Usually, I pass on the question.

However... if a maniac burst into my house and held one of my family members or my cat at gunpoint and asked me to choose a favorite song (I've heard this kind of thing happens every so often), I have little doubt that my answer would be "Lord of the Dance." The lead track from Signs of Life, Steven Curtis Chapman's spectacular follow-up to the hugely popular Heaven in the Real World, "Lord of the Dance" is a consummate recording. I compliment the recording and not just the song  because I can hardly imagine it being any more finely tuned than it is. When Steven rerecorded "Lord of the Dance" (as well as "The Walk") live in Abbey Road studio for his Greatest Hits record, it was a fun little experiment. But it wasn't the masterpiece found on Signs of Life. This album is somewhat of a departure from the reverb-soaked pop rock of the last album. It adopts more of a down-to-earth folk rock approach. Steven and the band blend crisp, percussive acoustic guitars with wailing electric leads, distinctive Dobros, fiddles, pianos and more into a mix that is musically literate but not lacking in Chapman's radio-friendly charm. Signs of Life won a Grammy for best gospel album, and at least four of its songs were nominated for song of the year at the Dove Awards; and it's no accident. From beginning to end, excellence pervades. If you want to hear great musicians jamming out on high quality Christian pop rock songs, this is your album. And "Lord of the Dance" represents the best it has to offer.

What a song it is. It pains my trying to come up with ways to adequately describe it. The first tones grab your attention, mysterious, suspenseful. The guitars, tuned to open D, slide and bend with mournful anticipation. Underneath, percussion: light, but with purpose. A whine and a slide, and then on either side, far left and right, the acoustic undercurrent begins with a snappy but somewhat dark run down the strings, ending in the low D string ringing warmly in its sound space. The riff goes back and forth, a dancer in its own right, just shuffling, biding its time until it's time for the real choreography. The vocals come in, but no lyrics yet. Just "da dums." The tone is measured, ambiguous. It's clear that something is happening, but we don't yet know how to feel about it. All we know is we want to hear more. The instruments mellow and find their place, keeping the pulsing rhythm as the verse starts, and when Steven sings about his birth on the Tennessee river, we are already there. The feeling of those foggy shores on a humid southern morning with a slightly chilly breeze; the dark green of the foliage on the bank still casting shadows in the newly-risen sun; you can just about feel the flies buzzing around the back of your neck. It's an almost Deliverance-like moment. There are no dueling banjos, but these are modern times. Our musical tour guides are playing Taylors now.

Halfway through the story, the first cymbal sounds, and we begin our journey upriver. The rapids are approaching, and the pensive folk instruments are leading us to a crash-course with rock n roll when we go over the waterfall and into the chorus. At this point, it's useless to identify the parts of the song . They have solidified into a whole so unified, that there is no one playing the song; there simply is the song.

Basically, "Lord of the Dance" is as perfect a song as I have ever heard and I love everything about it, even though I don't care for Riverdance or even dancing in general. I've listened to it probably 6 times while writing the last two paragraphs and I'm not sick of it yet. When Speechless came out I listened to "Dive" until I drove it into the ground. I'm not sure I can do that with "Lord of the Dance." But I should talk about the rest of the record. "Signs of Life" is a nice mellow song and has some cool bass in it. "Children of the Burning Heart" has an inspiring melody and it invokes imagery of mountains and fields and wind in your face - of freedom and determination. It also has some great fiddling. "Rubber Meets the Road" has a solo that is straight up crunk as anything in the dirty south. "Only Natural" is a great jam song. "Let Us Pray" and "The Walk" are the really popular, Dove-nominated songs, which means they are good, but as usual, not really the album highlights. Both are excellent in their use of Scripture, however. "Free" concludes the first half of the album with a tender emotional ballad.

This is one of those albums that I could listen to just about anytime, anywhere. It's Steven Curtis Chapman's finest hour and with a career as distinguished as his, that's saying a lot. It has great energy, style, and is a spectacular batch of songs. Get with the groove and join the dance with the Lord of the Dance music video. Unfortunately, this video cuts off the song before its logical conclusion. The 5 minute 20 second running time of the full track is too much of a strain for radio or music television, so what we got with this abridged, less than 4 minute version that is, of course, inferior to the full version (and is kind of a weird video to boot). Still definitely worth a watch.