Son, I loved you at your darkest

Recently, I have become a bit of an exponent of a style of music that I like to call "Chremo" - Christian emo.

Why, you may wonder? Certainly, for some the two terms have no relation to each other. How far that is from the truth. I'll explain in a moment.

It was a very interesting first term to this year - a very challenging, and, at times, deflating one. And my holidays, while pretty restful, didn't leave me feeling much better. So this term has begun with me feeling a little fragile - although that's not a terribly manly word to use - and feeling a bit afraid of getting as substantially deflated as I found myself by the end of last term.

This morning, on the road to work, I listened to a CD I hadn't pulled out in a few months - As Cities Burn's 2007 release, "Come Now Sleep" - and I was reminded, as if I needed reminding, of why we need more Chremo. Or at least, why the world is a better place for the Chremo that we have.

Typically, Pentacostal Christianity is so obsessed with a constant sense of victory that, like my aunt once very perceptively said, they "don't do melancholy". And evangelical Christianity, if we're going to talk in generalities, does not often do melancholy either. Although there's not the same determination to be in all things not just victorious but joyful, there's not a lot of room for doubt either. Evangelicals don't tend to put out a lot of music, and, when they do, it's focused mostly on proclaiming the gospel, which doesn't exactly allow you to express a sense of detachment from God.

Enter Chremo, which, like its secular siblings and cousins emo, screamo and emo-core, is filled with doubt, disillusionment, uncertainty and, above all else, melancholy, and yet it looks to God, and addresses all of life's questions to God.

All this can be seen perfectly in "Contact", the wonderful opening track to "Come Now Sleep", which asks, "God, does grace reach to this side of madness? Because I know this can't be the great peace we all seek."

Hearing that line this morning made me think of the name of ASB's first album, "Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest." And that name, this morning, felt like an answer to the question that "Contact" asks. Yes, grace does reach everywhere, whatever point on the spectrum between joy and misery, victory and madness. Wherever you lie, grace reaches out, because, as we will find one day, God loved us at our darkest.

That's something I think I'll hold onto this term.

Contact

I must admit, I have been wondering a bit lately why so much Christian indie of the moment is some kind of variant of emo. Think about it: how many Christian indie bands can you think of right now who aren't playing emo or emo-core? And no, Switchfoot don't count as indie. Exactly. Almost everyone's emo in some form or another.

But listening to the latest album by cult hardcore band As Cities Burn, "Come Now Sleep", has helped me understand why, aside from being very "now", emo should be such a pervasive genre in Christian circles. As the name, an abbreviation of "emotional", makes quite obvious, emo is a very emotional style of music, and, when coming in its more hardcore form, is able to express almost every emotion known to man, usually in the one song.

That's when it's done well, of course. Done badly, emo just sounds whiny and turgid. But As Cities Burn do it very well. They're very much at the hardcore end of the spectrum, but qualify as emo here primarily because of the presence of lyrics like "She's putting cuts on her legs to bleed out the devil". The album also ends with the soaring, heartbreaking 13 minute epic "Timothy", about the recent death of friend of the band members. Yes, this is certainly an emotional album. But it's the breadth of the emotional spectrum that interests me here, and the way that a style of music like (emotional) hardcore can deal with so many emotions that are a fundamental part of the Christian walk, yet are so often neglected in our music.

When he was more folky and less hardcore, David "Pedro the Lion" Bazan wrote a brilliant song called "Secret of the Easy Yoke", that talks about the experience of near-crippling doubt. "If this is a test", he sings, "I hope that I'm passing." I know the feeling. Few Christians would feel free to sing a song about feeling detached from God, feeling like you don't even really love Him. And yet we all feel like that sometimes. So why shouldn't we sing about it?

"Come Now Sleep" has everything in it. Fury, anguish, despair, grief, complacency, righteous indignation. And, most brilliantly I believe, it has doubt and detachment. The first track, "Contact", is the best example of this. Changeable, soaring between majesty, devastation and indifference, the song is just about as accurate a representation as you can get of how it feels to be shut off from God while trying desperately to reconnect. It's an incredible song, and the lyrics play no small part in its brilliance. The album never settles for despair. It ends with hope, in fact. But there's a time for everything, including despair, a feeling that is present everywhere in the Psalms yet absent in most Christian music. It's not absent in this song. "God, does grace reach to this side of madness?" vocalist Cody Bonnette asks. The answer is, of course, but the song doesn't include the answer because you never feel like there's an answer at the time. The conclusion the song comes to is an incorrect one, but very truthful all the same. "God must be asleep," Bonnette sings at the end. "God must be asleep."

We all know that feeling, that point when we can't comprehend how God could possibly be awake and yet leave us in our pain. The Psalmist Asaph took the sentiment a step further in Psalm 77 and asked, "Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful?" (77:8-9a). Of course he hadn't forgotten to be merciful, just as we know, listening to "Contact" that, of course God isn't asleep. God never sleeps, as another Psalm tells us. But the best art shows us life as we know it to be. If the Bible doesn't shirk away from feelings of doubt and despair, why should Christian art?

If it takes a good dose of emoification to make our music that bit more honest, I say, bring it on.