At Lollapalooza 2006, I caught a large portion of the Mutemath set — a band that I had never heard of at the time — and I friggin’ loved it! Imagine my surprise when I read that they’re actually a Christian rock band.
Or wait…are they?
It seems that they’re fighting the label on this but unfortunate damage has surely already occurred. Their Wikipedia page states that they’ve even sued their label for this type of accidental misrepresentation.
Did I miss all the references to the capital “He?” Could they be singing to Jesus and not me? Argh!
The story always continues, though.
If Mutemath had been billed and marketed as a Christian contemporary band, a genre with a largely evangelical listenership, it isn’t likely that they would’ve been able to produce the songs in their discography that most directly contend with faith, such as “Burden” from their 2009 album, “Armistice,” with lyrics like: “The devil is not the nature that is around us/but the nature that is within us all”; or “Blood Pressure,” a song that is essentially about being a Christian disappointment, with its lyric, “Why can’t you do a little more for Jesus?”; or the depressive slow jam, “Pins and Needles,” which confesses, “I’m growing fond of broken people/as I realize I am one of them.” Ironically, those songs are very much about spiritual beliefs, but they’re dark and not particularly worshipful, penitent or uplifting, which disqualifies them, among many listeners, as part of the lyrical tradition of Christian music. [Washington Post]
