Here's my December album pick for you, and a personal story behind it: Revival by The Fairfield Four.
It is no surprise to my family to come home to a house that sounds like a gospel revival, with bands like The Fairfield Four and Swan Silvertones blasting through all the speakers. There really is no music that hits and moves my core more closely, with a capella gospel expressions being the distilled essence of what I've always loved most in music, from my childhood obsession with Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, to the world of bluegrass, to the soaring harmonies of the greatest rock and roll bands. It isn't just flat thirds, flat sevenths and 1-4-5s that draw me in. It's the sound of faith. Of giving. It's the sound of the world being in a single note, like hearing eternity in an ocean wave.
But gospel music in particular speaks to my sense of faith, not because I subscribe to a formal church (I do not), but because I do subscribe to the world of magical thinking. I just believe...I *know*...that there's way more we don't know than what we do, from how the world works broadly to how we each work individually. This magical space is where I live in songwriting and what I try to give myself to in my own music.
But it is in a capella gospel choirs like The Fairfield Four--not my own songs--where the space feels most alive to me, for both the sheer beauty of the voices to the stories behind them. As any student of American music knows, the origin of this type of singing deserves to be mentioned and never forgotten. It came from the most wretched of situations: the slavery in our own backyard. Of oppression. Of absolute devastation. This is not a trivial or insignificant fact. It is transcendent, humbling and frustrating. Why...because somehow the devastating tragedy of our past helped create the devasting beauty of this music that we cherish, of American music. It wasn't worth the cost, a deal with devil if there ever was one. But the transaction was completed nevertheless, and what choice do we have in the face of such present beauty, in a universe we don't fully understand, but to throw up our hands when songs like Dig a Little Deeper reach our ears, surrender to the belief that something magic and mysterious is happening, and start digging?
December has always been a home for magical thinking. And that is why I propose to you this album for your holiday playlist: https://open.spotify.com/album/6BpCzQYIktx2g6ZJjMsdTe