LanceBlog: Everything You Need To Know About Life You Can Learn from Jars of Clay

Soon after I became a Christian the acoustic alt-friendly band Jars of Clay burst onto radio and even MTV with the hit song “Flood.” Music was incredibly important to me at that time in my life. I had sampled a few of the other Christian offerings in that era and there is no getting around the truth; it was uniformly homogenous, cheesy, and superficial; and dare I say bloodless? OK, it was horrible. So, the timing was fortuitous to say the least. Jars allowed an easy ramp from Counting Crows and Toad the Wet Sprocket.

Ever since then, Jars has basically provided the soundtrack to my walk with Jesus. At the time of its release I may have underappreciated Much Afraid. And it may have even taken years for me to “get” If I left the Zoo. But, I have come to esteem all of their work on its own merits, you can’t take it any other way. The run Jars of Clay went on from 2003-2009 releasing 4 near perfect albums is monumental (Who We Are Instead, Redemption Songs, Good Monsters, The Long Fall Back to Earth). I don’t care how many Dove Awards they win, I still contest their message is underappreciated by Christian audiences and that their artistry is underappreciated by secular critics. This is a special band with something to say and a unique way of saying it.

Their themes are manifold and yet connected: brokenness, the battle within us all, crying out for justice in an injustice world, a need for connection, and many others. Sometimes the vessel for the message is breezy and ironic, in other songs it is melodic and even whimsical, still at other times it is heavy and melancholic. One of my favorite songs, Two Hands sounds like a very generic CCM praise song that hides in plain sight some very lamentable and frighteningly honest lyrics; “I have a broken disposition I'm a liar who thirsts for the truth And while I ache for faith to hold me I need to feel the scars and see the proof.”

But I digress, here is a thematically arranged sample of Jars songs with Youtube clips.

Everything You Need To Know About Life You Can Learn from Jars of Clay

Submission: Take my World Apart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCezEbaMHdA