Album of the Day — December 4
Jars of Clay — Jars of Clay
Jars of Clay — Jars of Clay
04.December.2020
Jars of Clay
Jars of Clay
1995
Jars of Clay have angst written all over them — look at the album cover of their self-titled debut album.
But the members were much more than angsty — they had beliefs—a rarity in the secular rock and roll world.
That said, angst was certainly a key ingredient to ALL music in the early to mid-90s. A lot was going on — grunge was at its apogee, the Oklahoma City bombing, OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murder, Alanis Morrisette harnessed the anger of every jilted female in the world, and somehow a Christian Rock band from Nashville scored a secular hit album.
The band's name, Jars of Clay, is derived from the New International Version’s translation of 2 Corinthians 4:7:
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
The core members :
Dan Haseltine — vocals
Charlie Lowell — piano and keyboards
Stephen Mason — lead guitars
Matthew Odmark — rhythm guitars
met while students at members met at Greenville College in Greenville, Illinois.
After winning the Gospel Music Association talent contest in 1994, the record labels came knocking. Eventually, signing with a contemporary Christian label, Essential Records, Jars of Clay set about recording their debut in earnest.
A friend and intern at Essential Records’ had an uncle that was guitarist Adrian Belew. She gave him the Jars of Clay demo. He was impressed enough that he wanted to produce the band.
That’s a big deal.
Unless you’re a musician or music nerd, you may not have any idea who Adrian Belew is. In addition to his longtime involvement with the revered progressive rock stalwarts King Crimson, Belew has worked with artists as varied as:
Laurie Anderson
The Talking heads
Nine Inch Nails
David Bowie
Frank Zappa
The band self-produced the majority of this self-titled debut, but Belew did produce two tracks, “Flood” and “Liquid” — arguably, the two best tracks.
Jars of Clay’s first single was the Belew produced “Flood.” The song was immediately embraced by Christian radio and shot up the charts. The album was also met with critical acclaim, and soon Essential Records knew they had something that transcended the Christian rock world — they had a hit album.
As “Flood” sat atop the Christian charts, the label knocked on their secular parent label Silvertone Records, to help promote the album to the mainstream.
With Silvertone's help, the band was introduced to alternative radio and the unique sound and instrumentation of “Flood” made the alternative radio programmers salivate. The song’s acoustic yet “grungy” sound gave it a unique sound — one not dominated by electric guitars and anger.
Soon mainstream stations and magazines, like their Christian counterparts, were singing Jars of Clay’s praises.
The band would tour in support of both Christian acts and mainstream acts like Matchbox Twenty, Duncan Sheik, and Sting. This caused some consternation among Christian Fundamentalists …but then, almost anything outside of their belief system upsets them.
“Flood” would become a Billboard Top 40 hit (peaking at #37) and a Billboard Modern and Mainstream Rock Top 20 hit. The record itself would sell two million copies (three million worldwide) and reach #46 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart.
Jars of Clay was a bonafide hit record …and yet very few people knew of its religious underpinning. The lyrics to “Flood,” while unusual, don’t really get Godlike or even preachy:
Flood
Rain rain on my face
It hasn’t stopped raining for days
My world is a flood
Slowly I become one with the mud
CHORUS
But if I can’t swim after forty days
And my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves
Lift me up so high that I cannot fall
Lift me up
Lift me up — When I’m falling
Lift me up — I’m weak and I’m dying
Lift me up — I need you to hold me
Lift me up — Keep me from drowning again
Down pour on my soul
Splashing in the ocean I’m losing control
Dark sky all around
I can’t feel my feet touching the ground
CHORUS x1
Calm the storms that drench my eyes
Dry the streams still flowing
Casting down all the waves of sin
And guilt that overthrow me
CHORUS x1
When I’m falling
(Lift me up) I’m weak and I’m dying
(Lift me up) I need you to hold me
(Lift me up) Keep me from drowning again
Upon first listen, it’s innocuous. And once you find out about the religious aspect, THEN it becomes apparent — but still very far from overt or preachy.
“Flood” is just a good f’ing song.
CRITICS:
Tony Cummings in Cross Rhythms — “ A debut album [with a] slight musical debt to REM while other longer-in-the-tooth buffs might want to mention the band of folk-rockers owe a smidgen to the Californian soft rock sound of the 70s. But whatever their influences, these guys have come up with an album chock-a-block with songwriting craft, production skill, creamy harmonies, and luminous discipleship.”
James Chrispell at AllMusic — “This album revolves around the band’s Christian beliefs, but never comes off as preachy or judgmental. It includes the hit “Flood” and also covers such topics as child abuse and the manipulation of modern man. Produced with the help of Adrian Belew, this album shines.”
Jars of Clay doesn’t smell like teen spirit at all. In fact, the record can be marked as one of the demarcation points. The chart ascendence of Jars of Clay and artists like Hootie and the Blowfish, Radiohead, the Dave Matthews Band, and Oasis indicated that the industry was shifting away from some of the anger that had dominated it for four years.
The album, both lyrically and musically, is light years beyond the young guys who recorded it. And it's improbable that the band would inspire Norwegian Death Metal bands like Gorelord or Obliteration.
Who knows, maybe Jars of Clay was crafted with the aid of divine intervention. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter …good is good, and the proof is in the pudding, and Jars of Clay is just flat out good.