Growing as an artist is a hard thing. To be true to yourself you have to keep making art from where you are in life. The trick is, however, sometimes where you are in life today is a different place from where you have been in the past. As a fan of the artists, you want the people to have those experiences and have the chance to grow and change. As a fan of the music, though, it is sometimes hard to grow along with that artist.
If you’ve journeyed with NEEDTOBREATHE over the course of their first four albums, you’ve experienced some of that growth. Hitting their stride with 2009’s The Outsiders and solidifying their position on 2011's The Reckoning, the band claimed their space as the purveyors of solid southern rock. Their previous records had tip-toed around this territory without owning the identity, and their latest effort, Rivers in the Wasteland, seems to return to those origins.
Growing Pains
In speaking with the band, it's clear that they have gone through a tremendous growth period. They have fought through internal strife and professional pressures and have come out on the other side with a renewed sense of purpose. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m glad for them as individuals to be in a better place. However, in my experience, tension makes for more compelling art — maybe that’s just me.
The album opens with great promise on the slow-burn, acoustic track “Wasteland.” Then, we immediately turn west out of South Carolina and start cruising down the 5 along the coast with Brian Wilson on “State I’m In.” To be fair,
A) I love the Beach Boys,
B) the similarity really stops once the verse starts, and
C) it’s a great song; it just doesn’t feel like a NEEDTOBREATHE song.
And this is the story of much of Rivers in the Wasteland: lots of great songs, but they just don’t feel very cohesive and don’t sound like what we’ve come to expect from the band. They hit homeruns on tracks like “Oh, Carolina,” perhaps the most similar to the southern rock sound we’ve come to expect. The heartfelt and mellow “Difference Maker” also has the downhome honesty that's easy to love, but then we’re stuck by the unexpected 80’s flavor of “Where the Money Is.”
Returning to Their Lyrical Roots
It's worth noting that lyrically this album plays into a greater faith context than their last couple of records, again harkening back to their earlier days. While the band has never been shy about their faith, this one waves the banner a bit more explicitly than either Outsiders or, especially, The Reckoning did. As one of the few “Christian” bands to achieve mainstream acceptance in recent years, it will be interesting to see the general public’s reception of this album. Certainly, it will endear them to a wider Christian audience who may have been only marginally aware of them up to this point.
As such, Rivers in the Wasteland will serve as a solid introduction for new fans to get to know the band. It will showcase their versatility and will likely make for a great live experience. As the years pass, however, it will be interesting to see the place that the album and its individual songs take in the band’s history and ever-growing catalog.
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