Switchfoot - "Learning to Breathe"
Year: 2000
Label: Re:Think
Favorite songs: I Dare You To Move, Learning to Breathe, Playing for Keeps, Love is the Movement, Poparazzi
Lyric sample: "Only the losers win / They've got nothing to prove / They'll leave the world with nothing to lose / You can laugh at the weirdos now / Wait 'til wrongs are right / They'll be the ones with nothing to hide / Cause I've been thinking, thinking / I've got a plan to lose it all"
It's always difficult to write about what you consider to be great, because you want what you write about it to also be great. You want it to capture the essence of what makes it meaningful to you and inspire others to see your point of view. The fear of not doing justice can be paralyzing, and can make you second-guess yourself to the point where you either can't write well or don't write at all. Saving the best for last sometimes means that there's not as much energy and zest left for it. I hope that will not be the case here. I want to complete this list and move on to other things, and since I've already written a review of this record, I'm tempted to simply post that and let things be. However, I feel I owe you, my readers, more than that - I owe it myself and to my love for this record. So I'm going to try not to second-guess, and let my ideas and feelings regarding Switchfoot's third album flow as readily as I am able.
If you're a younger person or relatively new to Christian music, you might not be familiar with the first half of Switchfoot's career - although with the convenient early years pack that was released, you don't have much excuse. It was after the release of Learning to Breathe that the band's music appeared on the soundtrack for A Walk to Remember, and the rise to stardom began. That's also when they started adding more band members and gained the financial ability to overproduce their records. Learning to Breathe is the height of the the indie era, the three-piece phase, whatever you want to call it. Other than the first album, this one sounds probably the most organic. It's a smart rock record with a lot of restraint. You won't hear the distortion being pushed to the max here for cheap power - only on "You Already Take Me There" do we feel the fuzz. Most of the sounds that Jon Foreman lays down are bright acoustics and jangly electrics with light overdrive designed to intermingle with the bass. The interplay between all three band members has never been better, and no song would sound remotely like itself missing one of them. Sometimes it's hard to tell which instrument - bass or guitar - has the melody, so inextricable are the parts. The intros to "Love is the Movement" and "Learning to Breathe" typify the kind subtle writing and sound mixing at work. That delicate balance is one of the things I loved so much about old-school Switchfoot, and it helps set this album apart.
For those who have been oversaturated with "Dare You To Move" on the pop stations in recent years, it might be hard to imagine how fresh the song was on its first release (incidentally, it was originally called "I Dare You To Move"). When I put in the CD, I was expecting some kind of funky riff like on "Bomb" or a bouncy rocker like "New Way to Be Human." What I heard instead was a methodical, swelling buildup to what is essentially an alternative power ballad that leads into the acoustic title track. It sets the tone for the album as being one of introspection, not showmanship.
"I Dare You To Move" begins unceremoniously enough, but with an air of expectation as Jon sings "Welcome to the planet." The clean guitar rings out in constant rhythm, becoming an undercurrent that runs through the song. The band takes time to let it play, to linger on the harmonics and the little keyboard chimes before the second verse. The chorus is pretty and straightforward, Jon's distinctive vocals easily floating into the high notes. When the second verse begins, everything changes. "Welcome to the fallout," he sings with a bit of edge on the end of the last syllable. The rhythm section kicks in along with the distorted guitar for a burst of sound followed by the relative quiet of that clean undercurrent, still steady beneath it all. Long before we hear the lyrics "The tension is here," we know the tension because it's being displayed for us in the dynamic wrestling, as if the song can't decide how it wants to sound. The second chorus is of course louder and more emphatic than the first, and the bridge goes from conflict, to question, to surrender all in a few brief bars, culminating in the falsetto line "Salvation is here." The instruments come crashing back for that final chorus, that crystal clear impassioned plea, which then dissolves into noise before settling into the more calming beginnings of "Learning to Breathe." Its brilliance is in the effective use of simple elements. Many of the other songs on the album are more complex, but few are as powerful.
Another standout is "Love is the Movement," the battle cry of the album. This song has it all - an anthemic chorus, a great classic Foreman metaphor (and a double meaning for the word "movement"), a wailing soulful ensemble, and an epic exultation (going up the octave on "This is a revolution"). The brittle sounds of the verses accent the lyrics about waiting for motion. I can't really begin to explain this song, which is part of what makes it so memorable. All of the things I say about make it sound cliche, when it's anything but. It's one of the best in Switchfoot's catalogue.
"Poparazzi" gets down and grungy with an unkept garage rock sound in a boisterous track about the meaningless pop songs that get stuck in our heads. This is the father of songs like "Gone" that have so much fun with the subject matter. "Innocence Again" flirts with reggae influences. "Playing for Keeps" poignantly captures the funk and confusion that comes with having to let go of a relationship. I've always loved this song because it has a lot of energy, but it's still profoundly forlorn. This song sounds like resignation feels. It's creepy good. Then there's "The Loser." It's an anthem for all losers, and of course it takes on the Scriptural paradox that we lose our lives in order to save them. Switchfoot has long been interested in such paradoxes. "Living is Simple" audaciously asserts that living is simple because losing is easy - it's just dying. Anyone can do it. "Is this fiction / Or divine comedy / When the last of the last finish first." "Erosion" continues the pondering with yet another destructive metaphor. Erosion be seen as something that eats away at you, but Foreman prefers to equate it with the cleansing force of the Spirit, washing away our impurities.
I feel like in many ways Learning to Breathe is Switchfoot's most mature work. It has at least as much lyrical efficacy as anything they've ever done, with more obviously applicable spiritual themes than some of the latter records. It has the transparency of Legend of Chin, the experimental energy of New Way To Be Human, and the cohesion and atmosphere of The Beautiful Letdown (maybe the most similar record to this) but without all the bombast and fluffy production. It's a track list filled with great songs, played with conviction and honesty, stripped down to their vital elements with nothing added and nothing missing. This was the album that convinced me Switchfoot was going places. I liked New Way to Be Human, but when I heard Learning to Breathe I was transfixed. And I still get that way after 8 years, which is why this has remained my favorite record.
Take an introductory breathing course with this video for You Already Take Me There.
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