Categories: music
Tags: Music
Date: 05 August 2009 09:00:30
The Cornish appear to do things a little differently when it comes to distributing quality Christian music and I have to say I like it. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago Rose Grigg is a new artist I have come across recently, whose music I highly admire. In many ways she reminds me of Martyn Joseph in the early days when much of his work had an explicitly Christian theme but still obviously had the ability to transcend the Christian ghetto and provide a ladder for him to escape without having to give up his music. (Not that those escaping the Christian music ghetto and following a different career path is always a bad thing as Maggi Dawn has illustrated).
Anyway I digress back to Rose and the whole Cornish alternative Christian way of doing things. First off they appear to go beyond "nice" Christian venues. On the 8th August, according to her MySpace site, Rose is playing Cornwall Pride in Truro. Then there is getting hold of a CD. When I e-mailed the lovely people at Soteria music to find out how much the CD was and where I had to send the money they just asked for my address and sent me a copy for no charge. Now, don't get me wrong I'm not complaining about escaping the expectations of a capitalist society, but......well I've grown up in an a house where I so understand the line within Billy Bragg's "I Don't Need This Pressure Ron" where it says, "I like toast as much as anyone, But not for breakfast, dinner, and tea". So anyway as I was saying before I got diverted yet again they appear to do things differently in Cornwall.
Having recieved the CD and listened to it I was generally really pleased I'd got it in my collection. The first track is I Believe, which you can listen to on MySpace. It is a kind of creed for the modern world, with an honesty which reflects the type of faith which Peter Rollins talks about in "How (Not) to Speak of God".
Other strong tracks include 13:13, Child and Silver to Gold all of which have a slightly celticy acoustic feel and some quite beautiful lyrics which generally lack that cheesy feel which some explicitly Christian music can have. The only song I really didn't like was Shine, where the guest vocalist isn't quite as melodic or tuneful as Rose. It also lacked the sensitivity which the other tracks seemed to have.
If you are into listening to music where the poetry in the lyrics reflects both the beauty and pain involved in faith and where, generally, the melodies are haunting I can't recommend this highly enough. Looking at the latest posts on Rose's site the tracks from Dayspring can be downloaded from the Sorieta site, or you could do what I did and e-mail for details of the CD. She also has some new tracks available which I look forward to listening to. Hopefully it won't be too many years before she is booked to appear in the performance cafe at Greenbelt.