"Strange Town" by Neon Horse, Monday 25, 2021
PLAYING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET. On the first season of the Labeled podcast on an episode about Staveacre's final record on Tooth & Nail, Speakeasy, we learn that the band was listening to Tool (they're often called the Christian Tool) and that band was ahead of its time for the record label which didn't yet have the capacity to get the band onto Active Rock radio. However, even post-Tooth & Nail, Stavesacre never saw the success that future Tooth & Nail bands like Thousand Foot Krutch, Underoath, Anberlin or even Project 86 or Christian Rock contemporary P.O.D had. Stavesacre called it quits in 2007, the same year that Salomon released the first Neon Horse record. Salomon has sung with many other acts before Stavesacre and after Neon Horse. In Salomon's latest episode with Labeled, he talked about Neon Horse, and about his use of character voices. Salomon's strange voices on the records were often an attempt to make Jason Martin laugh and sometimes to ruin his concentration on the guitar during practice. Sometimes Martin would be in the studio when Salomon recorded vocals. He'd do several takes, and the one that gave Martin the strongest reaction was what Salomon wanted. You have to be in a certain mood to enjoy Neon Horse, but it's the season for ghoulish music and it fits nicely behind "Two Graves."
HOW CAN YOU BE FOUND WHEN NO ONE KNOWS YOU IN A STRANGE TOWN. If Stavesacre was Tool, then Neon Horse was A Perfect Circle, even down to the shoegazy guitars of Starflyer 59 (substituted for Smashing Pumpkins' guitarist James Iha). When Andrew Beaujon interviews Salomon in Body Piercing Saved My Life, we get a picture of a singer who was fed up with the evangelical music market and who had a different idea about where faith-based music could go. Neon Horse's music wasn't played on Christian Rock radio, but it's still pretty Christian. Today's song is based on Luke 15:16. The verse comes from the Parable of The Prodigal Son, a young man who demanded his inheritance and squanders it in the city, only to realize that he would rather be a servant of his father than a stranger "in a strange town." His realization is after the money's gone, and he has to resort to feeding pigs. He is so hungry that he himself eats the pigs' food. "Strange Town" illustrates the story as a child who has been exploring the world, only to realize that it's now dark outside and the world is much less friendly at night. The song also alludes to the parable at the beginning of the chapter, The Parable of the Lost Lamb. Rather than putting the emphasis of the story on being returned to the foal or to the father's house, the song leaves the listener stuck in the strange town. It's hard having grown up in a spiritual community based on following the rules to think of this parable as a metaphor for the church. It's the fear that wakes me up some nights, realizing that the church was once my safety net. But then you realize that Jesus, too, was rejected from his safety net, the church of his day. The church is a place that accepts you if you follow its rules. But disagree with it, you're cast out like a stranger in a strange town.
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