Blindside: The Great Depression
Following up their re-issued album, Blindside rocks again with The Great Depression album. Less screaming than Emery but full of passion, the album is laced with references to the Other (capitalization Blindside’s) and urges shares intimate struggles from their own experience. With each album, the maturity deepens, and the sound works as rock and roll should.
After seeking a heart that wouldn’t get old, freeze over or crack in “This is a heart attack,� Blindside speaks to the Other who has come to the window (in a dream?) in “Ask me now.� Having temporarily lost sight of the Other, the band happily takes what is offered as only “fragile glass� separates the two. Is this fragile glass really our inability to communicate with others, whether human or divine? Or is it our cage of reality that hinders our belief in things we don’t know and makes us scared of things that are different? As Adam was created by the breath of God, Blindside sings “how I’ve longed to inhale Your breath.�
Later, in “Put back the stars,� Blindside puts up their sail even without wind, trusting the other to breathe air out to make their boat move. The band recognizes that they’re lost without the Other, so they’ve become reliant on what is offered. I can’t help thinking of another story from Genesis—how Noah built the ark because God told him to, even though there was no water. Not a bad comparison for Blindside, sort of a Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.� I find myself wanting the same kind of faith.
Life is like a poker game in “Fall in love with the game,� as Blindside reflects on a time when they forgot who they were, where they came from, and what they were worth. Recognizing that they need to acknowledge where their identity comes from, they beg the Other to “Say something then/Cause I’ll be dead before dawn/If Your voice comes unheard.� The struggle that encompasses the song seems similar to Jacob’s wrestling with the angel—desiring to be in control and to have a new name, he struggled with the divine and proved his worth.
This desire to be known and to know resurfaces in “We are to follow,� but roars out in “My alibi.� There Blindside sings, “When all is said and done/When all is gone and still just begun/I will be asked what I did with my time and why/Can You be my alibi/Cause I know I spent it dancing with You….You have been walking along/With me for quite some time/Put me with my deaf ear and blind sides/Both of these/turned against You/We all know that You’re here.� This is probably my favorite song by the band to date, ringing with figurative imagery and personality. We all turn our eyes from God when we know we’re wrong, defiantly ignoring what He calls us to—and Blindside includes everyone in that knowledge. So, the ex-church goer knows, but so does the defiant atheist, the uneducated soul, and the distant foreigner. Not a very typical American view, but these Swedes have a way of not pulling punches.
Speaking of being straightforward, Blindside rocks the judgmental church, with its anthem to the hurt soul. “To become all you needed to survive/With a color black you would not be blessed/In a church that decides on color and puts a price/On a paradise you now seem to know so well/But I know/I see Jesus in your eyes.� Different in its delivery, the band kills two birds with one stone—the song comments on those who have sinned and are therefore ostracized AND it critiques the church that condemns based on race (and by inference, creeds, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) But Blindside’s positive spin on the whole deal? They can see Jesus in even the eyes of the ‘condemned.’ Paradise doesn’t cost different people different things—Jesus already paid.
Blindside doesn’t just criticize others though, as they look inward at their own blindness in “When I remember.� Looking back, the band remembers their childlike faith that seems so covered over now (like thickened skin), comparing their faith to walking blind and distracted. Nobody moves them like the Other does, and they ask that the Other would wash all over them. This closing ‘baptism’ wraps up their latest album as well as the breakthrough album of a band on the rise. Having entered the mainstream arena, Blindside hasn’t dumbed down what they believe—not a bad mix of hard rock and faithful reflection.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
After seeking a heart that wouldn’t get old, freeze over or crack in “This is a heart attack,� Blindside speaks to the Other who has come to the window (in a dream?) in “Ask me now.� Having temporarily lost sight of the Other, the band happily takes what is offered as only “fragile glass� separates the two. Is this fragile glass really our inability to communicate with others, whether human or divine? Or is it our cage of reality that hinders our belief in things we don’t know and makes us scared of things that are different? As Adam was created by the breath of God, Blindside sings “how I’ve longed to inhale Your breath.�
Later, in “Put back the stars,� Blindside puts up their sail even without wind, trusting the other to breathe air out to make their boat move. The band recognizes that they’re lost without the Other, so they’ve become reliant on what is offered. I can’t help thinking of another story from Genesis—how Noah built the ark because God told him to, even though there was no water. Not a bad comparison for Blindside, sort of a Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.� I find myself wanting the same kind of faith.
Life is like a poker game in “Fall in love with the game,� as Blindside reflects on a time when they forgot who they were, where they came from, and what they were worth. Recognizing that they need to acknowledge where their identity comes from, they beg the Other to “Say something then/Cause I’ll be dead before dawn/If Your voice comes unheard.� The struggle that encompasses the song seems similar to Jacob’s wrestling with the angel—desiring to be in control and to have a new name, he struggled with the divine and proved his worth.
This desire to be known and to know resurfaces in “We are to follow,� but roars out in “My alibi.� There Blindside sings, “When all is said and done/When all is gone and still just begun/I will be asked what I did with my time and why/Can You be my alibi/Cause I know I spent it dancing with You….You have been walking along/With me for quite some time/Put me with my deaf ear and blind sides/Both of these/turned against You/We all know that You’re here.� This is probably my favorite song by the band to date, ringing with figurative imagery and personality. We all turn our eyes from God when we know we’re wrong, defiantly ignoring what He calls us to—and Blindside includes everyone in that knowledge. So, the ex-church goer knows, but so does the defiant atheist, the uneducated soul, and the distant foreigner. Not a very typical American view, but these Swedes have a way of not pulling punches.
Speaking of being straightforward, Blindside rocks the judgmental church, with its anthem to the hurt soul. “To become all you needed to survive/With a color black you would not be blessed/In a church that decides on color and puts a price/On a paradise you now seem to know so well/But I know/I see Jesus in your eyes.� Different in its delivery, the band kills two birds with one stone—the song comments on those who have sinned and are therefore ostracized AND it critiques the church that condemns based on race (and by inference, creeds, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) But Blindside’s positive spin on the whole deal? They can see Jesus in even the eyes of the ‘condemned.’ Paradise doesn’t cost different people different things—Jesus already paid.
Blindside doesn’t just criticize others though, as they look inward at their own blindness in “When I remember.� Looking back, the band remembers their childlike faith that seems so covered over now (like thickened skin), comparing their faith to walking blind and distracted. Nobody moves them like the Other does, and they ask that the Other would wash all over them. This closing ‘baptism’ wraps up their latest album as well as the breakthrough album of a band on the rise. Having entered the mainstream arena, Blindside hasn’t dumbed down what they believe—not a bad mix of hard rock and faithful reflection.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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