Reviews
By Chip Webb (Annandale, VA)
Caedmon's Call has long been loved for the variety associated with any of their projects. Three lead vocalists (Cliff Young, Derek Webb, Danielle Young), two primary songwriters (Aaron Tate, Derek Webb), and five different musicians (Cliff Young, Derek Webb, Joshua Moore, Todd Bragg, Garrett Buell) have contributed immeasurably to the band's success. Each of their projects has been different from each other: their folk/alternative self-titled major label debut (1997) was followed by an attempt to capture their live sound in 40 Acres (1999). That album's successor, Long Line of Leavers (2000), was very experimental in nature musically and a departure from previous efforts lyrically. Finally, In the Company of Angels (2001) was a worship album that sounded ... well, pretty much like you'd expect a Caedmon's Call worship album to sound. Nonetheless, there were three big surprises with that album: the inclusion of several slightly modernized hymns in the mix, the decreased songwriting and vocal input from Derek Webb, and the introduction of three new songwriters: Sandra McCracken (Webb's wife), Aaron Senseman, and bandmate Joshua Moore.
Still, all of these diverse projects really didn't hint at what would come with their newest release, Back Home. In some ways, Back Home can be considered a combination of styles from each of their previous albums, but in other ways, it's startlingly original. When Caedmon's Call hasn't been singing about human love in the past (as was true for roughly half of Long Line of Leavers and about one-third of 40 Acres), it's been majoring on theology, and a particularly Calvinist one at that. In the process (and this was undoubtedly unintentional), heart has taken somewhat of a backseat to head. Even when the band members have expressed feelings of doubt (as in Long Line of Leavers' "Prove Me Wrong"), loneliness (as in 40 Acres's "Table for Two"), and loss (as in Caedmon's Call's "Center Aisle"), to cite just a few examples, the theological musings have suffocated the emotions to such a degree that the songs have lost some of their potential power.
Back Home is different because it majors on spirituality rather than theology -- put another way, it's about our response to God rather than our thoughts about God. And while the spirituality still unquestionably displays the band members' Calvinist leanings, there are, surprisingly, offerings from the Wesleyan side of Christianity ("Only Hope," a modernization of a Charles Wesley hymn) and Anglicanism ("The High Countries," a song full of allusions to the works of C.S. Lewis). Caedmon's Call's members haven't lost their intellectualism at all -- they've just applied it to spirituality instead of theology this time around!
The album starts out as if it were In the Company of Angels II. Even with its Wesleyan spirituality, "Only Hope" wouldn't have been out of place on the band's previous album, and Joshua Moore's "You Created" likewise continues in that vein. It's on the third track, the astonishingly beautiful "Walk With Me," that Back Home comes into its own. From there, the album takes us through a diverse musical landscape populated with many different lyrical inhabitants who either long for God or have returned to him and, hence, are "back home." "Walk With Me" takes us into Psalm 23 territory; "Hands of the Potter" brings us back into more traditionally Calvinist musings; "The Kingdom" betrays a Middle Eastern musical influence in its tale of destruction of idols. Each song offers a different perspective on the album's central theme, and the variety herein (both musically and lyrically) is impressive.
For this, we have several songwriters to thank. Tate is back for only one song, the wonderful "Beautiful Mystery" (cowritten with Webb and Cliff Young), and Webb is likewise missing in action. But McCracken, Senseman, and Moore are back, and there's the addition of Randall Goodgame and Andrew Peterson. All contribute excellent work, with Moore's lyrics particularly being heady. But the two best tracks belong to McCracken: "Walk With Me" and "The High Countries." Both songs are dense, reflective, and lyrically evocative, rich with Biblical or literary allusions.
The last two songs are sung expertly by Danielle Young, and this album will undoubtedly be remembered as the one in which she really came into her own as a vocalist. (Memo to Danielle: have McCracken write all of your songs in the future.) With Webb mostly relegated to background vocals (undoubtedly due to his then imminent departure from the band), the burden of the majority of the songs falls on Cliff Young. Cliff has always been my least favorite Caedmon's Call vocalist (Webb is better, and Danielle can sing circles around both of them), but he does an outstanding job on the last track, "Mystery of Mercy," and, to a somewhat lesser extent, "Beautiful Mystery." If he can keep up this level of performance, it bodes well for his increased duties.
The production is crisp and clear, and the musical variety is considerable. In the end, though, it's the beautiful and haunting lyrics with their rich imagery that stay with you from this album. Whether it's "The hush of [the] voices" of God and human being (from "Walk With Me"), the train station to "the high countries" of Heaven (the station may be from Lewis' "The Last Battle" in the Narnia series, while other references in the song are to his "Weight of Glory"), the "river/Where the strong can swim in deep and/The weak and the broken/Can walk across so easily" (from "Beautiful Mystery"), or the tale of a pilgrim "watching [his or her] kingdom crumbling down" (from "The Kingdom"), there's much here both to respond to and to ponder. Back Home is Caedmon's Call's best album yet, and a promising sign for their future (even without Webb).
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