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Phil Wickham
Cannons

Phil Wickham delivers a mixed result but becomes the reigning king of Christian Britpop.

By David Sessions


IT’S ALWAYS difficult to determine what exactly to do with a record that, after the first listen, is looking like a disappointment. Especially one that’s almost so right and one that, perhaps, you wanted very desperately to like. Is it more satisfying to keep listening, hoping to discover some hidden nuance or broad undercurrent of genius, or would it perhaps be more wise to leave thinking it might be bad, just in case further listening were to remove any doubt? Critics who are doing their job have little choice in the matter, and unfortunately, multiple listens wear the attractive sheen off Phil Wickham’s second try.

Phil Wickham
Cannons
Rating: 5.9/10
[Sony; 2007]
Cannons is better than his debut, but Wickham has made one mistake here that he didn’t before: including at least one truly great song that calls out the rest of the record. The record opens with its best song, the subtly muscular “Must I Wait,” which starts with grim, glacial atmospherics, toys with some Interpol-esque dance rhythms, and crescendos to a gritty, distortion-bolstered finish. Wickham then decides to start the record over, and a second starting act, “After Your Heart,” resets the mood. One verse borrows its rhythm and call-and-answer guitars directly from Muse’s “Time Is Running Out,” but Wickham’s version is part of an oceanic Keane vision as opposed to rage-sick, sinister frothing. Despite some wince-inducing lines, the two openers are structurally beautiful and very, very well sung.

What follows is mostly unimaginative, though it generally works better than it should. Wickham styles himself as a “worship” artist, and traces of that genre’s melody construction and song structure are easy to spot. But unlike many of his fellow Christian artists, his Britpop isn’t a gimmick—it’s his style through and through, and he’s convincing unlike any other Christian artist who has jumped on a niche-genre bandwagon. There hasn’t been a Christ Martin this effective since Plus One’s Exodus (which came before Coldplay was so ubiquitously fashionable). The new reigning piano weepist has the best pipes in the business and expressive nuance to burn. “Cannons,” for example, is about as stock as they come, but Wickham’s powerful singing and the sheer force of good melody manage to lend it magnetism. So while it’s easy to be indifferent to most of these songs, it’s impossible to call them bad.

One of the surprises (and disappointments) of Wickham’s debut was his seemingly oblivious use of spectacularly cliched lyrics. As in not just common cliches, but past-the-saturation-point, even-atheists-know-them howlers. He’s done some better here, but only some: will still get abundant mentions of heavenly bodies, of “coming home,” and of looking into God’s eyes. “Desire,” particularly, is a gurgling collection of assorted emotional meaninglessness (“I’d be nothing without You, yeah I would die/ I didn’t have Your hand/if I couldn’t look into Your eyes”). Several bad rhymes also trigger eye rolls (“Here is laughter beyond the tears/Here is courage to face your fears” on “The Light Will Come”). While otherwise inoffensive, “True Love,” propagates the sketchy notion that Jesus surrendered to death out of overwhelming love for people, rather than out of love and obedience for the Father. Like the irksome trick of referring to Jesus as “true love,” Cannons consistently deals in the shallow and common. Thankfully, it does so without being so inane as to be unlistenable.

The difficulty of summing up this record is that its best moments are so thoroughly mixed with its worst. Interesting musical touches—a left-field but effective Southern folk detour (“Sailing on a Ship”) and a brief channeling of Enya (“You’re Beautiful”)—are counteracted by cliched imagery and, a number of times, just too much sap. Collectively, such mixed messages add up to a record that’s pretty but uninteresting, pleasant but unchallenging. Wickham still needs to outsource his lyrics, but he’s to be commended for getting decidedly more comfortable in a skin that suits him perfectly.


David Sessions is the editor of Patrol.



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