The Sound

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNQgABsUfK8

There don’t seem to be any videos from songs off the latest album yet, but I’ve managed to find a few songs from a live acoustic session; for the album versions you can check out their MySpace.

Lay em down

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PN-BMHi5L8

The Outsiders

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6xvpQYA94Y

Stones Under Rushing Water

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fxvxn7wwrA

Forgiven

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZVjKrmvYYQ

the other snippets I’ve heard from this album are quite amazing too

Will be posting more about Jon Foreman’s (Switchfoot’s frontman) other side projects soon…
Here’s some more heavier stuff from the album:

Needle and Haystack Life

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6fIgbe9RxM

Hello Hurricane

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFjvaaF25F4

Mess of Me

www.youtube.com/watch?v=et1vriu29Qk

Hello Hurricane is the seventh album released by American alternative rock band Switchfoot The name comes from the love the band has for surfing, and it is indeed a surfing term, which entails that to switch your feet means to take a new stance facing the opposite direction. It’s about change and movement, a different way of approaching life and music, and this is what their latest album is all about, which has also been hailed as marking a sort of revival for the band.

Similarly to Anberlin, Switchfoot is often referred to as a “Christian Band”, mostly due to their continued involvement with the Christian rock scene. The band has always philosophically disagreed with this label: “For us, it’s a faith, not a genre”, says Jon Foreman. “We’ve always been very open and honest about where the songs are coming from. For us, these songs are for everyone. Calling us ‘Christian rock’ tends to be a box that closes some people out and excludes them. And that’s not what we’re trying to do. Music has always opened my mind—and that’s what we want”.

Quoting Wiki: Though they hold this position, they have not alienated their Christian fans. As in their indie days, they are still distributed to Christian retail outlets through Sparrow Records/EMI CMG,  featured on Christian radio and charts, and presented Dove Awards, even after having been signed to the mainstream Columbia Records from 2003-2007 and currently, Atlantic Records. “Signing to Columbia was a realization of something that we’d wanted to be from the beginning,” Foreman explains. “When we were signed to re:think Records -an indie label, the goal was to get the music out to everybody. But when Sparrow -a Christian label bought re:think Records, it was evident that our music wasn’t going to be in the hands of everybody. As a Christian, I have a lot to say within the walls of the church. But also, as a Christian, I’ve got a lot to say just about life in general … So to be able to be on Columbia and on Sparrow felt like the realization of the two sides of what we had to say. It’s a dream come true to be able to have songs that are outside of the box.”

Back to the album:  Hello Hurricane acknowledges the storms that tear through our lives. It is an attempt to respond to those storms with an element of hope, trying to understand what it means to be hopeful in a world that keeps on spinning.   My favourite 2 songs are Always and Enough, and these particularly reflect the true meaning of HOPE and FAITH, through the lines – ‘Every breath is a second chance’ (Always)… and ‘every seed dies before it grows’ (Enough).

Always

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LugoQ_1QEHE

Enought to Let me Go

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYGCDnOhMsg

I love this song and the band’s unconvetional approach to what they believe in. The band has toured with Fall Out Boy and has apparently re-invented themselves from one album to the next.

From ‘WiKi’: Over the years, many fans, critics, and other members of the media have consistently characterized Anberlin as a Christian band. However, Stephen Christian stated in an interview that their faith is more complicated than a simple label: “I think we’re categorized like that a lot because we’re on Tooth & Nail Records, which, years ago, was known as a Christian label and never lost that reputation. I don’t care who listens to our records. If it helps people in whatever circumstances they’re in, that’s amazing, but I definitely don’t classify us as a Christian band.”[35] Elsewhere, Christian has remarked, “[My faith] affects every single aspect of my life, but I’m not a preacher, I’m an entertainer.”[42]

Despite these statements and others of the like, multiple sources list the band as part of the Christian rock genre, and some Anberlin song lyrics do contain religious references. Furthermore, the band appears at Christian music festivals such as Parachute Music Festival and their songs have been included on Christian rock compilation CDs[43] and DVDs.[44] They are also played on the Gospel Music Channel.[45]

Anberlin has also been repeatedly featured in Christian rock magazine HM (Hard Music, which was originally the fanzine Heaven’s Metal). Christian submitted a letter to the magazine, criticizing the avowedly Christian punk band the Knights of the New Crusade for a promotional image that represented a “black mark on the face of Christianity”.[46]

Christian has also said in an interview with Lightforce radio how the band tries to “step out of the bubble” and referred to themselves as being part of Christian music. He discussed in detail what Christians should do in their lives: love and embrace others as Jesus would as well as show God’s grace to others. He mentioned as well how the band Fall Out Boy said in an interview that they did not really know much about Jesus until Anberlin toured with them.

More about the band: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anberlin

Samples:

My Space Link
http://www.myspace.com/davidcrowderband