This came up on shuffle just now and I was struck by home much it sounds like an Anberlin song circa the first 3 albums (with significantly poppier vocals and production):
Yeah I can hear it, hadn’t revisited this album in a while but this song definitely has that throwback 2000s vibe to me
Never listened to that band before (I guess I thought maybe they were a country artist or something) but that song is very Anberlin-coded and I dig it. I'll have to listen to more of these guys.
They have a couple of songs where I'm like damn, I can dig this (see: Berenstein) and all the rest do absolutely nothing for me. If they've released anything as good as Berenstein in the last 5 years, someone feel free to call me out and tell me what it was, it seemed like they had potential to be more than the pop rock they mostly are (no shade, just not my thing).
BftBM turned 23 today and I decided to give the Help Yourself vinyl a spin. lemme tell you when I say it’s crisp. My Edifier speakers aren’t anything flashy so o plugged in my good headphones and shewww it’s good. Dead quiet. They did a great job with the records. Modern rocks bands are basically null but man Anberlin was the real deal. the first album gets me so good.
Even though Blueprints is ranked near the bottom for me, it's aged so well and really surprises me when I listen. They were so strong right from the beginning.
iirc, they did a co-headlining tour back in 2011. funny enough, i believe Stephen missed a few dates, so Phil Sneed filled in. it feels like they're in divergent music circles nowadays, with Switchfoot kind of retreating back into the CCM-adjacent scene a decade ago, and Anberlin moving further away from it, but up until Stephen left, i would've imagined they'd probably been about equally relevant in some ways. touring and general scene exposure, i imagine Anberlin currently has some sort of advantage, but i thinK Switchfoot might have a leg up on charts
Switchfoot does seem to be making another play at more the mainstream rock/less CCM world on this new album. They're pitching it as a throwback record, playing the Danny Wimmer festivals, shows with Fuel and Lit, stuff like that. Anberlin also feels like the kind of band that gets a noticeable bump on an album play but is a tier down on a lineup when it's a normal show with Matty singing.
Switchfoot made a truly headscratcher of a record with Interrobang, and I suspect lost a ton of momentum as a result. I'm not surprised they're returning to a more upbeat, rock-centric sound with the new record. That being said, I will always view Switchfoot as a significantly bigger band than Anberlin, with or without Stephen, but especially without him.
It's clearly not THE only indicator, but Switchfoot has 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify while Anberlin has 900k
i'm glad they're pivoting again. i've always had lots of respect for them, and as a kid they were my favorite band, but they really lost me when they started backtracking into CCM, just as i was leaving the fold of Evangelical Christianity. think i had also just outgrown them musically save for a couple of albums. there were some great songs on that album, but some of it just felt forgettable to me. all those streams of The Beautiful Letdown definitely add up
just looking at SF's spotify numbers, they really are just massively propped up by the two hits I was expecting - part of me was wondering if I missed something over the 20 whatever years since then. It's funny to think that they were actually the first bigger rock band I saw of my own accord, playing a now-defunct downtown festival in Birmingham called City Stages. I'm never gonna work through their discography, do they have an album that stands out since then that I should be listening to?
Nothing Is Sound is my favorite of theirs and still really holds up for me. I like Oh! Gravity and Hello Hurricane a good amount too, and after that is where they fall back into the CCM-adjacent stuff (and Jon's songwriting just got worse in my opinion).
Vice Verses and Native Tongue are great albums and I will fight you to the death over it. Not really, but I'm surprised you'd cut off at Hurricane when Verses is of similar ilk.
I'll give you that Vice Verses isn't where they have a big style change, but it is where I think Jon's songwriting falls off. Maybe it's just that I graduated high school and my music tastes changed a lot between HH and VV. I should revisit all the later albums soon though.
especially since VV stemmed from the HH writing sessions. their original intention was to release 4 albums worth of material from that time period, and i think those were the only two that made it out the door. while both of those were very important albums for me when they came out (i have both collector's editions sitting in an unpacked box a few feet from my desk as i type this), i find some of those songs a bit cheesy now.
Switchfoot is a Giant CCM adjacent band and hold their own as a Rock band. They are still super relevant to the people who have been die hard fans, but if they have a festival spot people know the hits and love the energy. Jon is one of the most genuine people I have ever met from the music industry. Anberlin in their current iteration is funny as a band on the bill but I bet these will be bigger shows than what they have been doing. Switchfoot did a coheadliner with Relient K a while back and this feels pretty in line with that.