Review Summary: Beautifully personal.
Switchfoot has a way with melodies, and its lead singer and songwriter Jon Foreman has a gift that produces lyrics at best brilliant and at worst cheesy. But more importantly, Foreman writes with so much candor and sings with such equal conviction, that he can infuse even the simplest of words and music with a passion that reverberates into the soul. That may sound a tad extreme, but I believe I have found a kindred spirit in Foreman. He has made a career of exploring (through song) the meaning of existence itself. He makes this music because he cannot escape these existential thoughts, because in these songs, he can try to make sense of everything from life's storms to God's love.
This tension between highs and lows, often a battle fought within oneself, is the origin of Vice Verses, Switchfoot's eighth studio album and second on their independent label lowercase people records. Foreman explains that 2009's Hello Hurricane was "singing through the storm," whereas Vice Verses is an expansion of the theme, singing about the ups and downs of life, one's vices and virtues, one's blessings and curses. Switchfoot evolves with each release, and their latest shows them at their maturest and most confident. They have deliberately transformed their overall sound here, opting for more space, to allow the music to breathe and feel bigger, even with less instrumentation. It's an embrace of the direction they began on Hello Hurricane, and to my ear, it stands most in contrast to 2006's Oh! Gravity., whose pulsing energy on tracks like the under-3-minute title song set it apart from much of their other work. To be fair, I loved the oft-underrated Oh! Gravity. for it's energy and quirkiness. Yet, I appreciate the growth Switchfoot has shown since then, and I feel myself growing with them.
Vice Verses is all about balance, and it showcases a good balance of Switchfoot's strengths. Overall, it has a darker and grittier sound than Hello Hurricane; it's driven by bass and drums, and the guitars almost sting. Yet it's simultaneously uplifting and has more of Switchfoot's trademark infectious melody than Hello Hurricane did. Hello Hurricane functioned best as a unit album, but Vice Verses works both as an album and as a collection of diverse songs that stand on their own. The lyrical themes deal directly with life and death, most explicitly in the opener and closer, "Afterlife" and "Where I Belong," which play off of each other (the end of Where I Belong leads back into Afterlife, borrowing lyrics from the opener, a device also used on Hello Hurricane). In this way, the songs act as cohesive bookends to the story but also suggest that this is about the story itself, not the ending. "Afterlife" bursts on the scene with an energy and an addictive chorus that rival "Meant to Live" from 2003's The Beautiful Letdown. And yet it manages to sound more dramatic--and aggressive--than any previous opener. But "Where I Belong" is the biggest standout. It's a sweeping anthem reminiscent of U2 that is longer than any track on any other Switchfoot album and perhaps sums up Switchfoot's mantra--why they're doing this at all--better than any other song Foreman has written.
Almost as good is "Souvenirs," a sentimental and simply gorgeous song about memories that plays the heartstrings in an unexpected way. But these three very different tracks are only the beginning of the range on this record. The experimentation pays off on "Selling the News," whose spoken, rap-like verses are lyrically clever, bitingly critical of modern media, and a strangely effective contrast to the catchy chorus. The steady, ominous pace of "The War Inside" combined with a monotone, poetic verse is equally transfixing, sounding like soldiers marching into battle...only to fight themselves. "Blinding Light" (which has a reggae feel) and "The Original" (a song pretty much designed for rocking out) are on the motivational end of the spectrum, letting the virtues of optimism and originality shine through the vices. "Dark Horses" and "Rive Above It" are also motivational but sound more commercial than does most of the album, which seems to make them my least favorite. Yet the encouragement for the downtrodden on these four tracks is very much needed on an album that veers into especially dark territory.
The darkest song on the album is undoubtedly the title track, "Vice Verses." The production chooses to focus on Jon Foreman's vocals, removing nearly all instrumental accompaniment. The result is that it sounds heartbreakingly personal. Foreman actually sounds on the verge of tears at points. It's the closest we come to his seasonal solo EPs, which showcased some of his best lyricism and most moving vocal performances. Just as personal and nearly as stripped-down as this track is "Thrive." While "Vice Verses" looks for God and meaning even in one's own broken heart, "Thrive" is a battle against one's inner demons and a desire to thrive, not just survive them. And after all of this, although it's clear that Vice Verses is a vehicle for self-reflection, the song "Restless" is the track that really pulls me outside of myself for a moment. It is essentially a worship song, and with Foreman's earnestness and imagery, it is as beautifully personal a worship song as any I've heard.
If I had to describe this album in two words, those would be it: beautifully personal. It goes deeper than even the raw pain in Hello Hurricane and mines that territory in an inspired and relatable fashion. Vice Verses feels like Switchfoot's most honest release to date, with the kind of artistic freedom they wanted when they split from Columbia Records in 2007, and that's what places it among their best work. I would quote some of Jon Foreman's lyrics to illustrate this sentiment better than any description could, but I would rather encourage you to listen to him sing them yourself. He does it particularly well here, and yet I'm still waiting for Switchfoot to hit the peak of their potential.
