Making Peace with the World By the Music of Luxurious

Spend 5 minutes scanning the headlines and also you threat sinking into despair and cynicism. Accounts of battle, corruption, hatred, and strife appear to fill the information at an ever-increasing charge. And naturally, for People, the ever-present hum of politically associated despair is quick reaching a fevered pitch because of the 2024 presidential election—an election that’s been awash in controversy since day one as a consequence of issues over each candidates’ age and psychological acuity, to not point out Donald Trump’s standing as a convicted felon and rapist.

I don’t condemn anybody, due to this fact, who’s near throwing up their arms in disgust and contemplating methods to disconnect and disengage, if for no different motive than as a result of I’m sorely tempted to observe them. And but, as a Christian, any such impulse is tempered by two beliefs, albeit beliefs which can be usually battered and left gutted by the information.

First, God stays on the throne no matter who holds earthly energy, and second, there are realities deeper, extra profound, and extra actual than something that occurs in any given information cycle. These realities usually come into higher focus via the lens of artwork, and on this case, a lately launched music by the indie-rock band Luxurious.

Luxurious has probably the most fascinating tales in Christian music historical past. Fashioned within the early ‘90s at Toccoa Falls Faculty, a non-public Christian faculty in rural Georgia, the band shortly made waves with their intense stay exhibits, onstage antics, and cryptic, even suggestive lyrics. Luxurious’s debut, 1995’s Wonderful & Thank You, performed like a riotous mix of The Smiths’ magnificence and Fugazi’s depth with lyrics that explored such matters as sexuality, movie star, and consumerism. There was nothing fairly like them within the Christian scene and so they appeared on the verge of breaking large, particularly after an acclaimed efficiency on the 1995 Cornerstone Pageant.

Because the band was returning residence from Cornerstone, nonetheless, they had been in a horrific automobile accident that left a number of members hospitalized in a extreme, even life-threatening situation. After a protracted restoration, Luxurious launched their sophomore album in 1996, The Newest & The Biggest, however by then, the hype had light and the band’s future appeared doubtful. Round this time, three of Luxurious’s members—singer/guitarist Lee Bozeman, his brother and fellow guitarist Jamey Bozeman, and bassist Chris Foley—started exploring Orthodoxy, finally changing and changing into ordained clergymen. (For a deeper dive into Luxurious’s story, I extremely suggest the superb Parallel Love documentary, which is at present streaming on Tubi free of charge.)

Since then, Luxurious has continued to launch music, albeit sporadically as a result of members being unfold out throughout the nation. Certainly, almost ten years have handed between their final album, Trophies, and their latest, the self-released Like Unto Lambs. Though it’s the band’s shortest album thus far, Like Unto Lambs isn’t any much less potent than its predecessors, with one music specifically—“Fur / Ticker Tape”—changing into more and more poignant, particularly as I take into account America’s political current and future.

“Fur / Ticker Tape” begins in a deeply cynical place with Lee Bozeman singing “the final speech that I heard / Didn’t imply a factor / Not a factor to me”—a realization that in the end causes him to query whether or not he ought to imagine in something in any respect. The second verse isn’t any higher; “The final phrase that was mentioned / Heavy and lifeless / A fur on a king,” he sings, which causes him to marvel “What’s left to dream? / Is there a dream?” (Anybody who’s ever listened to a politician’s empty guarantees and shameless appeals can certainly relate to Bozeman’s sentiments right here.)

By the point the music’s refrain seems, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket (“Oh, the headline says all of it / The bottom circle isn’t all that far”) with unhealthy information in every single place (“Oh, the ticker tape speaks to me / On this world there may be distress”). All Bozeman can do is sigh: “With this world / Let me make my peace.”

For all of their cynicism, nonetheless, these first two verses additionally include a nonetheless small voice (i.e., Bozeman’s voice wrapped in results) that gives up transient reminders of God’s sovereignty because the one who each “hung the earth upon the waters” and “hung the curtain of the cosmos.” Thus, when the third verse kicks in, a flicker of hope may be heard.

Bozeman sings of a serenade, a “fairly little factor,” earlier than asking “Are you able to hear the strings” whereas backed by a Remedy-esque synth melody. In the meantime, that also small voice remains to be current, whispering of “the one who tore the curtain high to backside,” a reference to that second instantly after Christ’s demise when God eternally eliminated the barrier between himself and humanity (Matthew 27:50-51).

The music dies down for a second, giving Bozeman house to take a breath that “has to final for all of eternity” as that small voice sings of “the one who closed the gates upon the backyard.” This results in considered one of 2024’s most electrifying musical moments as Bozeman, supported by Glenn Black’s surging drums, cries out, “Open the gates for me!”—a placing demand for God to reinstate paradise right here on Earth.

The refrain comes again round and the world remains to be going to hell in a handbasket; it’s nonetheless a spot stuffed with distress. However whereas the primary time Bozeman sang, “With this world / Let me make my peace,” it was an admission of resignation and defeat, it’s now a real assertion of peace in addition to humble reliance on “the one who hung the earth upon the waters” and thus sustains it no matter human exercise.

Simply as Physician Unusual helped me survive the 2016 election, Luxurious’s “Fur / Ticker Tape”—and by extension, the remainder of Like Unto Lambs—has proved to be one thing of a tonic for this yr’s election. Certainly, I’ve usually discovered myself muttering “With this world / Let me make my peace” below my breath as a prayer of types as I learn the headlines and the newest accounts of humanity gone terribly awry.

I nonetheless really feel the impulse to disconnect and disengage, however with the music’s assist, it will get reframed. I nonetheless need to disconnect, however not just because I despair of America’s political actuality or all the different horrible issues that clamor for my consideration. As an alternative, it’s as a result of there’s a deeper actuality with which I need to join, each for my very own soul’s sake and for the advantage of my household, pals, and neighbors.