"We've always used music as a vehicle to explore our own questions and frustrations," says Switchfoot singer/songwriter/guitarist Jon Foreman of the band's new album.
Oh! Gravity. is Switchfoot's sixth studio album, their third for Columbia Records. After 2003's double-platinum selling, The Beautiful Letdown, and another gold selling album, Nothing Is Sound, Foreman sums it all up by saying, "I'm in therapy and I write songs. It's all an attempt to try to come to terms with reality."
The San Diego-based band has often combined a spiritual bent with a critique of some of modern society's hypocrisies on songs like the Top 5 singles "Dare You to Move" and "Meant to Live," as well as such tracks as "Politicians" and "Happy is a Yuppie Word" from their last album, 2005's Nothing is Sound.
Produced by U.K. vet Tim Palmer (Tin Machine, Pearl Jam, The Cure, Mother Love Bone, U2), Oh! Gravity .expands Switchfoot's sonic palette while at the same time dealing with social issues on songs like the alt-country blues of the song, "Dirty Second Hands," in which Foreman sings of the dehumanisation that comes with technology ("With an army of me/We invent our own enemies/Man verses machine").
"Although it ends up pointing the finger at us, rather than the iPod or the combustion engine," Foreman said.
Other politically motivated songs include the title track's generational appeal for love, peace and understanding ("Sons of my enemies/Why can't we seem to keep it together?"), "American Dream," with its biting truth, "When success is equated with excess/The ambition for excess wrecks us" and "Awakening," about trying to recover the innocence of a child in the midst of an ever-harsher reality. Their A&R exec, Grammy-winning producer Steve Lillywhite, helped the band achieve the song's Police-like world beat and epic, wide-screen scope.
"I feel like I get born-again a lot," says Foreman about the song. "I feel like I can easily drift into being dead as well. There's a crusty shell we get as we get older that shuts us off from being blissfully oblivious. We've all been hurt. It's a way of portraying the thing we often try to protect and hide-our innocence-as a strength."
The group was founded in 1996 by Jon and his brother Tim, along with Chad on drums as Chin Up. After only a handful of shows, they were signed by Charlie Peacock to re:think Records as "Switchfoot," a surfing term meaning to shift your feet on the board to take a new stance facing the opposite direction.
In 2004, Switchfoot's frontman Jon Foreman claimed to be "Christian by faith, not by genre".
"We've always been very open and honest about where the songs are coming from. For us, these songs are for everyone. Calling us 'Christian rock' tends to be a box that closes some people out and excludes them. And that's not what we're trying to do. Music has always opened my mind - and that's what we want."
