“Stare at the Sun” by Thrice, Tuesday, September 19, 2023

In 2003, one of the biggest Christian Rock albums wasn’t actually sold in Christian book stores. It was by a band with occasional profanity in their lyrics and often criticized Bush-era American politics. While not every member of the band Thrice is a Christian, lead singer Dustin Kensrue became more and more vocal about his faith throughout the years of the band, heavily alluding to the Bible and C. S. Lewis in the band’s lyrics.

I STUDIED SAINTS AND SCHOLARS BOTH AND NO PERFECT PLAN UNFURLS. Thrice’s second record, The Artist in the Ambulance, is often called the band’s best record by their avid fans. The album merges the band’s post-hardcore sound from their debut record, The Illusion of Safety, and more ambient sounds that the band would explore throughout their career. The band’s second record has influenced a number of bands from Bring Me the Horizon to Pierce the Veil. The record was the band’s first release on a major record label, Island Records.  With a major label, the band was able to up their production, though as the podcasters on Church Jams Now point out, The Artist in the Ambulance suffers from some tuning problems and low quality mixing which may have been a result of the band being on a lower budget on the major label or the then limited technology in recording heavier music. In 2003, Thrice wasn’t played on Christian Rock radio. If I remember correctly, the band started being played on Radiou around their seventh record, Beggars. 

‘TILL I UNDERSTAND OR GO BLIND. The fifth track on Artist in the Ambulance, “Stare at the Sun,” takes the album’s energy down, though the song is by no a slow ballad. The song was the third and final single from the album. While the song is more of a moody pop song than post-hardcore one, the lyrics are desperate and Dustin Kensrue delivers them so that the listener can feel the stakes of “waiting for a miracle.” The speaker who has read “saints and scholars both” looking for a sign presents us with the human condition. We cannot know the secret knowledge as it pertains to our lives so the wise spend their years in scholarship in search of someone who has figured this life out. But in the search for wisdom, many grifters throughout history claim to be able to sell the answer. Ultimately, the speaker resolves to “stare at the sun . . . ‘till [he] understand[s] or go[es] blind.” It’s the tenacity of Jacob wrestling the angel. It’s the promise of secret knowledge when Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtim, yet never bestowed upon the readers. It’s that brief understanding Psyche knows before her death at the end of Till We Have Faces. It’s that flash of light at the end of a life that we’ll never be able to access. And we may stare at the sun looking for the answer, but eventually self-preservation will kick in and the revelation will have to be postponed for another day.

Read the lyrics on Genius.