My wife and I enjoy the sounds of the artist Mat Kearney, the man who has crossed over from Christian to mainstream without so much noise as a strum from his guitar, even making it on a popular TV drama [it may have been "Grey's Anatomy"... anyway, I use the term "drama" very loosely]!
Here is a portion of how one music critic, from the All Music Guide, describes Kearney’s sound on a page here,
…Mat Kearney comes across as a mix of John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and U2. Kearney has the loose-limbed , acoustic feel of Mayer’s earliest work, but he has a hazy hip-hop underpinning to a lot of his songs that recalls Mraz – plus, like Mr. A-Z himself, he will easily slip between crooned choruses and rapped verses. Then, he shares the sincerity, not to mention the vague Christian undercurrents, of early U2, and he certainly builds on their echoey guitars and arty soundscapes throughout Nothing Left to Lose, which means that he can also occasionally sound like Coldplay here, particularly on the relaxed epic “Crashing Down”and the piano-driven anthemic power ballad “In the Middle.”
The track which grabs me the most and says, “love me,” (Guido off the “Cars” movie] is the track, Crashing Down, off the Nothing Left to Lose album… I say this with the proviso that we are yet to purchase his recently released album.
The section of the lyrics that have resonated for me, in particular, are those of the chorus…
What am I doing here… If you’re not with me… What have I got to live for, if it’s just my own dream… Take it back to the beginning, back to the start… When gravity’s pulling, you’re still holding my heart… You come crashing down… Crashing down
I find the context of the words to be personally [getting all post-modern on ya], rather penitential [allwords defintion: feeling pain or sorrow on account of sins or offenses; sincerely affected by a sense of guilt, and resolved on amendment of life]… the words of one “crying out” with an overwhelming sense of need and grace, with a sense of distress about where one’s life is presently tracking, desperate for change!
You can listen to this track here
You can watch and listen to a live recording here
Enjoy!
Until Next Time
I am Jonny King
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