"Spiders" by Lovedrug, Monday, November 21, 2022 (repost)
SEARCHING ON A WIRE FOR A WIRE. The Militia Group was a record label founded by former Tooth & Nail Records employee Chad Pearson. Pearson founded the label in 1998, and some of the artists that were in Tooth & Nail's sphere signed to The Militia Group. Pearson who grew up overseas in Papua New Guinea in a missionary family had discovered Christian rock through Tooth & Nail Records. Pearson curated a group of artists who were ambiguously faith-based or ambiguously agnostic. Lakes (Watashi Wa's Seth Roberts' band post-Eager Seas' failure on Tooth & Nail), Waking Ashland's Jonathan Jones' We Shot the Moon, and Denison Witmer all called The Militia Group their home along with groups like The Beautiful Mistake, Copeland, The Rocket Summer, Quietdrive, Rufio, The Summer Set, Acceptance, and their most successful act, Cartel. At one point, they almost signed Fall Out Boy. In this context, Lovedrug signed to The Militia Group. They toured with fellow Militia Group acts and played at Cornerstone, which led many fans to think that they were a faith-based band. However, in a 2011 interview with IndieVision, the interviewer is awkwardly shut down when guitarist Jeremy Gifford explains that the band is not Christian, though he doesn't claim to speak on behalf of every one in the band's beliefs. In fact, Christian media, back in the late '00s were keen to include bands with any kind of faith into the fold. Jesusfreakhideout included Lovedrug's Everything Starts Where It Ends and Paramore's Riot! on their best of 2007 list.
CONNECTED TO THE OTHER END OF THIS TWISTED FREQUENCY I'VE SPUN. Joan Osborne asked the question "What If God Was One of Us?" Plumb tells us that "There's a God Shaped Hole in all of us." Both of these songs were on the Bruce Almighty soundtrack, a movie that was both praised and condemned by Christians for handling the lesson that no human could do a better job than God. Or Morgan Freeman for that matter. When an overtly religious song evokes God, there's a theological agenda. Sometimes a Christian band tries to be cool, singing about girls and nonsense for fourteen songs and tacks on a ballad about being lost without any direction until finding God. This track is either in the center of the album or attached to the end as sort of an epilogue to the album, either to be skipped or included to fulfill a contract. Sometimes, the band feels that this inclusion--no longer having to meet the j's per minute quota of the '90s--is the real purpose of the album. They would usually give a 15 minute speech toward the end of their set, saying something like, "You know guys, our band believes that you are here for a reason" or something like what Roma Downey said on every episode of Touched By an Angel. Using God in a song, though, whether by an evangelical band or by one that is agnostic immediately triggers a confirmation bias in listeners' minds. "But God doesn't it feel so good?" Paramore declares in their breakthrough hit "Misery Business." "I've found God," The Fray declares in "You Found Me." And hundreds of examples would make the band palatable to a Christian audience. When Michael Sheppard imagines "If God (or god) was on the radio," listeners at Cornerstone, at the Copeland tour, at the Nothing Is Sound Tour with Switchfoot heard what they wanted to hear. God was on the radio, speaking to them, telling them exactly what they already know. Funny how that happens.
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