Thomas Turner

Just Like God, Indie Rock is Resurrected

One year ago, Paste Magazine’s associate editor Rachel Maddux wrote a provocative article that asked the question, “Is Indie dead?” Comparing the question to the one TIME writer John T. Elson wrote forty five years ago concerning the more existential question, is God dead?, Maddux ties the theological question to the musical one: Elson wrote […]

Heather Smith Stringer, Tara Ward, Zadok Wartes

Curators of Beauty and Space

It is a rare and special treat to find a band that makes music, especially music that one might classify as religious music, which is wholly devoted to the pursuit of beauty. The Opiate Mass, a Seattle-based collaboration of musicians, songwriters, visual artists, audio engineers, and authors, provides just such a treat. In this interview, […]

Joel Heng Hartse

Beyond the Pomo Blues with the Weakerthans

Part the First – Armchair Theorizing and Rocking Out Is the fact that we are living in postmodernity enough for us to understand it? Or do we have to examine this thing, whatever it is, playfully called “pomo” by hip theologians and professors, and define it? Are the conservatives right about the wishy-washy moral spinelessness […]

Joel Heng Hartse

Stars: Set Yourself on Fire

We pop-culture-engaged Christians love to claim things as our own. From The Matrix to The Simpsons to Radiohead, if there’s something not altogether evil, or spiritual and “vaguely Jesus-y,” to use Ann Lamott’s phrase, we will somehow squeeze and twist a thing until it is almost Christian. So let me be the first to claim the Canadian pop band […]

Nate Anderson

The Shins

Are The Shins happy? It’s hard to know, of course, but with two critically acclaimed albums under their belts, they have the right to be. In three years they have shot from anonymity to indie rock stardom with a collection of songs in which happiness is not one of the dominant themes. One gets the […]

Kirk Webb

Is Christian Music Christian?

Christian music. What is it? And why is it? Before Keith Green, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith, I suppose “Christian music” in the United States would have been black and white Gospel expressions, campfire songs, hymns, and classical music with distinct Christian purpose such as Handel’s Messiah. Beyond those roots, the Christian music industry […]