A Collision or (3+4=7)

June 30, 2012
Terrell and Janna Wiebe |

The next album under review comes from one of the most popular Christian groups of the last decade. Though they recently played their last show together as a group, the David Crowder Band will forever be one of my favourites.

With three studio albums already in their pocket David Crowder Band seemed to have found their niche. As a result their 2005 release “A Collision or (3+4=7)” took the Christian music world by surprise. “A Collision” was different and remarkable in a number of different ways.

Musically “A Collision” was unlike anything I had ever heard. First of all it was eclectic. Blue grass, folk, alternative, rock and worship are all present on the album. The album is masterfully crafted to move you from one genre to another with the use of their musical interludes. If you are like me and enjoy almost any kind of music this is a whole lot of fun.

Something else I had never heard at the time was an album where the songs run into each other. It was hard to tell where one song ended and another began. This gave me a sense of listening not just to twenty one individual songs haphazardly thrown together, but rather to several sets of stories based around different genres of music. I loved it!

'When our depravity meets His divinity it is a beautiful collision.'

These were the words of inspiration for this album. This theme runs throughout the course of the album, appearing in different shapes and forms.

In some ways “A Collision” is as lyrically diverse as it is musically.

David Crowder writes a majority of the music on their albums. He has a way of never giving you what you expect. He has the ability to write beautifully complex songs such as “Wholly Yours.”

I am full of earth
You are heaven’s worth
I am stained with dirt, prone to depravity
You are everything that is bright and clean
The antonym of me
You are divinity
But a certain sign of grace is this
From a broken earth flowers come up
Pushing through the dirt

You are holy, holy, holy
All heaven cries “Holy, holy God”
You are holy, holy, holy
I wanna be holy like You are

The song carries on and eventually comes full circle.

So here I am, all of me
Finally everything
I am wholly, wholly, wholly Yours
I am full of earth and dirt and You

Yet David Crowder's simpler songs never lack meaning or passion. In particular “We Win” gives the listener a wonderful example of the power of simple words.

We’re gonna
shout loud,
loud until the walls come down

Because we’ve already won
And You don’t have a chance
Yeah we’ve already won
No you don’t have a chance
It’s already done
And you don’t have a chance
Because we’ve already won!

With all their talent for writing, David Crowder Band is not afraid to gain their inspiration from others. “A Collision” continues its diversity in lyrics with “I Saw the Light,” a 1948 hit by Hank William Sr. The group also included an additional verse written by Johnny Cash and another additional verse of their own. Played to a blue grass tune this song takes on a feel of its own. The track “Our Happy Home” is an adaptation of a seventeenth century folk hymn that brings another style of lyric into the fold. Here are just a few of the many lyrics.

From Egypt lately come
Where death and darkness reign
To seek our new our better home
Where we our rest shall gain

Jerusalem, our happy home
Would God I were in Thee
Would God my woes were at an end
Thy joy that I might see

There in celestial strains
Enraptured myriads sing
There love in every bosom reigns
For God Himself is King

I listen to “A Collision” because it gives me a bit of everything. In a sense it is the total package. It takes my heart on a journey through different genres of music and it also takes my mind through extraordinarily complex theology and beautifully simplistic wordplay. However, in the end what it does is give me a worship experience that I can share with others.

David Crowder band has released several albums since “A Collision or (3+4=7).” Their latest and final album “Give Us Rest or (a requiem mass in c [the happiest of all keys])” is a thirty four track monster that is sure to please any “David Crowder Band” fan and is worth every minute.

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