Canter Bridge

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I am unable to review a Jars of Clay album without being positively influenced by the memory of hauling my two sons, their teenage youth group friends, and our dogs and cat around in my enormous Toyota Landcruiser in Costa Rica in the late 90s and early years of the new millennium with this music blaring. There, I got that off my chest.

Not bad, actually. They kind of grow on a guy all over again.

The music is not bombastic, not even full. It’s the song-writing that lasts more than anything, as though the music were as much as anything a sonic envelope delivering to the ear some rather deft wordsmithery.

That’s not a bad thing. Lots of music has been heavy on the message and light on the noise.

So at this remove, how does Jars of Clay work now that I sit in my basement office in Indiana without all those marvelous distractions?

Lyrically, the album is anchored by ‘Famous Last Words’:

You say you heard every word, but I watched you turn away
Your eyes grew colder than winter
“Love is so intrusive,” I thought I heard you say
And laugh so unconvincingly

Famous last words, “I’m not ready yet”
“I won’t be gone a minute”

Narrow is the road and too high a price to pay
When loneliness is such a sanctuary
Empty are the musings and wasted are the days
When you say you were only waiting

And famous last words, “I’m not ready yet”
“I won’t be gone a minute” and I won’t forget
Famous last words
If tomorrow never comes, will I ever know that I was in love?

I was in love
In love

You say you heard every word, I watched you turn away
You said you were only waiting

The writer has captured the poignance in moments made significant only by their unexpected aftermath.

Yet one best discerns the heart of this band in ‘Grace’, a tune that expresses simple gratitude in terms clear enough to balance out the occasionally too clever articulation of introspection:

God, I admit I haven’t changed
Playing card houses still covering my landscape
I never expected You to stay
When I’m grabbing for these crumbs and cold loose change

I feel Your grace come running over every road
I love the way You’re calling overflow
I feel Your grace come running over every road
You break the floodgates down and carry all

God, I admit that I’ve loved these chains
And crawling around this cage sometimes has its advantages
I know someday this could get old
And I’ll need Your healing water to find my home

‘I feel your grace come running over every road’ arguably stands as the raison d’etre of a band that says lots of other things well, too.

Jars of Clay does not compete for my personal ‘favorite band’ status, but that’s OK. Their song of grace is enough for me.