Justin McRoberts
Justin McRoberts is an artist who seems focused on making simple, yet thoughtful music from the heart. Over the 9 year span of his career, this thirty-four year old from the San Francisco Bay area has been steadily building a reputation as an excellent singer, songwriter and musician. His latest album, Deconstruction, is a satisfying acoustic/folk pop/rock album that is continuing proof of his gifts and talents. One will not find any highly technically instrumentation or splashy production here; just clean songs that rely on the raw abilities of the artist and musicians to present the listener with an enjoyable musical experience.
The opening track, “Done Living,” starts out with a limited pallet. Rhythm guitar, piano, cello, and violin make up the instrumental quartet, with McRoberts’s sincere, emotion-filled vocals holding it all together. The lyrics ask the sobering question, “What will we do with the time we are given?”
“You see the question isn’t are you going to suffer any more
But what will it have meant when you are through?
The question isn’t are you going to die, you’re going to die
But will you be done living when you do?”
On the next cut, “America and the Soul,” the music fills out a bit more with the inclusion of a full drum and bass track. Lyrically, the songwriter continues to challenge the listener with the pop-cultural concept of the American dream, asking if it has not supplanted the pursuit of God for many in our country.
This album is about thoughtful discussion, and some edgy themes come up at times. The title track is another simple song musically, but continues with the provocative lyrics that are worth giving another example of:
“They say it’s not about performance
They say it’s all about the heart
But every critic with his pen or his computer
Talks about effectiveness and not about the art”
“When It Don’t Come Easy” is a country-flavored Patty Griffin cover that the singer pulls off exceptionally well. McRoberts shows the strength of his vocal ability here, and leaves one wondering if he shouldn’t consider a career in the country music field. “Religion Poisons Everything” is probably one of the weakest songs musically, but the lyrics are intriguing, as they seem to be giving a little dig at the new militant atheist movement.
Starting with track eight, things take a noticeable change in direction both in content and production. “The Night You Were Betrayed” is a rootsy offering that would make for a thought-provoking, pre-communion number for the brave spiritual leader out there. Track nine, “Bullhorn Theory,” is one of the best songs on the album, not just because of its inspirational nature, but because of its chordal structure and strong melody line. Here the songwriting gets less political and more spiritual in focus. Yet overall, this artist seems intent on challenging the status quo and has no fear of tackling difficult questions, something more Christian artists should feel the freedom to do.
In spite of the fact that McRoberts has a tendency to wear his left-leaning politics on his sleeve, it’s hard to find any fault with his music. Even his lyrics will undoubtedly find most thinking Christians, left or right, singing along. After all, good art will often transcend our limited rational reasoning, and at the least should take us far beyond politics.
A former professional musician, Roy Hershberger is still involved in writing, recording, and performing music on a local level. He also writes a blog that deals with matters of culture, faith, and Christian community.
Thursday May 15th, 2008 • View all posts by Roy Hershberger • View all posts in Album Reviews
↓ 16 comments
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I thought off and on about posting something about this review and decided to pare down my original thoughts but post something nonetheless.
While I appreciate the generally positive review, the fact that Hershberger mentions my “politics” more than once in the article is rather disappointing. Perhaps the only politically-oriented song on the record, “America and the Soul” receives minimal treatment in the review, much less as an example of my “left-leaning” (an assumption that finds little ground, particularly in that I don’t consider myself to lean left). That said, I wonder if I were a fervent supporter of Mike Huckabee, would Hershberger have mentioned my political leanings? If I was an outspoken McCain man, would a listener have to accept my music “in spite of” my politics, as the reviewer implies?
The impression I am left with is that the reviewer is hearing the album through an uninformed, preconceived notion of my politics; perhaps something he has read elsewhere.. but this is a review of an album.
Again, while I appreciate the generally positive review, I wonder if we will see this reviewer spend any font space in any later reviews covering artists politics.
Justin makes an interesting point. Granted, the review is positive (and should be!) but the biggest question is “Does our faith in the Father always inspire the same political views?” For me, the answer is “No.” While I don’t know very much about Mr McRoberts’ political views, I doubt it’s possible that they are any more liberal than my own– and even if they were, who cares? Assumptions that the majority of believers in America think conservatively are misinformed at best, an outright lie at worst. To Justin: I agree wholeheartedly. To Mr Hershberger: I’m not hating, simply pointing out a couple of assumptions made that resonate not only with Justin, but myself as well.
I would agree with these comments and would love to hear Roy weigh in on this review.
Hi all,
Thanks for each of your comments. Sorry it took so long for this response, but I just got back from a vacation with my family.
I came very close to not including the “left leaning” line, but than decided that it was my true sense of some of the forces that shaped Mr. McRoberts music and to dismiss this aspect of who he was as an artist was just playing it safe and not being totally honest of my impressions as a reviewer. I realized that it might raise some eyebrows, but I’ve never been one to avoid writing statements that are a little controversial, if they were indeed how I felt. Justin states that he does not consider himself “left leaning”, one can appreciate that, and I did offer to have the comment edited out if he felt it did not in any way accurately reflect who he is.
I also pointed out to Justin that if he did not wish to have people get such an impression that it was probably best not to post quotes and video adds for left leaning political candidates on his Myspace page. It’s always been my feeling that when one makes a political stand, such as supporting or denouncing a particular candidate, (left or right) they can expect to be understood in light of that stand. I think it is a bit unfair to assume that I would not have made a similar comment about an artist who outwardly supported a right leaning candidate. However, I have always found it odd that artists in general can be outspoken about their support for left leaning candidates and no one seems to say much, but have an artist be outspoken about his his support of someone on the right and he is often ridiculed by critics and labeled as a nut.
Personally, I’ve always admired the way Bono approaches the whole political thing. He plays both sides of the aisle, and he has his way of rebuking both sides as well, but in such a subtle fashion they don’t even realize they’ve been rebuked. I love the way he got Al Gore laughing at his own extremism on the global warming issue. Al got a little nervous, but Bono kept him laughing. It was great.
Another reason I decided to include the comment was that I hoped it would lead to some interesting discussion. Nothing like a little controversy to get people talking and thinking.
“The Left mocks the Right. The Right knows it’s right. Two ugly traits. How far should we go to try to understand each other’s point of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross is a clue.” - Bono
Roy,
I am on board with the Bono quote you finished your reply with, but it was in your review that the dreaded Left/Right terminology reared its ugly head. I find that the terminology is only used to write people off. We all know that as soon as we enter the realm of “left vs right” we have lost the conversation; there will be no “understanding of eath other’s points of view..”
It is somewhat ironic that, in reviewing a record whose theme is centered on the dismantling of cultural identifiers, you chose to use some of the very terminology we most need to deconstruct. If I like Obama, does that mean I must become a Leftist to support him? Or must I have been a Leftist all along? Either way, the question of why I might support a particular candidate shouldn’t be relegated to “which side of the isle” I stand on. In my experience, intelligent decision making in the are of politics is far more complicated than that. Painting me as “left-leaning” and suggesting that it is an aspect of my person that listeners will have to get over plays right into the trap that we have been stuck in for decades, particularly as christians. I want out.
Hi Justin,
I can appreciate what your saying, and I can also appreciate our need as a culture to try and get over just throwing labels at each other for the sake of “writing one another off”, as you put it. However, we also need to avoid thinking we can do away with cultural identifiers all together. If we go down that road too far we no longer have anyway of engaging in a reasonable conversation about ideas that have consequences. The fact is that Obama has one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate, and those votes have had serious consequences that we need to consider. One cant deconstruct a voting record that leans so heavily to the left. We must deal with the reality of it.
Perhaps we need to learn better how to deal with identifiers in a proper fashion, without using them to belittle each other. It was not my intent to use the left leaning comment to make people suspicious or mistrusting of you, and if it came across that way I’m sorry. I thought what I wrote in the two sentences after the comment in question made my intentions clear.
BTW Godtube is offering Rick Warrens interview with both presidential candidates if anyone out there has not seen it yet. Very well done, and in the spirit of what we are talking about here.
For a liberal, it’s not exactly easy to get one’s voice heard by the body of Christ because they’ve bought this idea that we’re all the same– much in the same way liberals all look at conservatives as heartless and fiscally stingy. I think what Justin’s trying to say is that when we use terms like “left” or “right” people are less likely to hear out the full message engrained in the material or person in question. For instance, my pastor is a very conservative man and one of the only men in my life that I have ever deeply respected. But he’s a conservative. We disagree on a lot of ideas, but if I were to pigeonhole him as “right wing” I’d miss the depth of a man I’ve grown to love and appreciate. See the dilemma?
Hi John,
I understand exactly what you are saying. The terms “liberal”, “conservative”, “left” or “right” are ways for us to quickly define a persons bent toward a certain political ideology. Unfortunately, people do have a tendency to paint with a broad brush when they here these terms. It’s not that they are bad words that somehow unfairly twist our perspective, but it is our human tendency to be prejudice and to stereotype so quickly.
I suppose I could have said something like this: Justin has a tendency to wear his support of political candidates who, usually support higher taxes and bigger government, generally vote for pro-choice positions, tend to favor and support government funded social programs, most often vote against bills that support school choice and competition in education, tend to be doves more often than hawks, etc…..
In spite of the fact that Mr Hershberger discounts politically oriented music with a dissenting tone due to an obvious Republican bias, he managed to write a clear and insightful review of Justin McRobert’s latest album. After all, a good vocabulary and sentence structure can - or should - overcome ignorant political pandering.
7/10
Yes, you could have… Wait, you just did.
While I am not going to go into the merrits of Sen. Obama, I will say that the description of myp political tendencies has about as much to do with my record as a similar description of the tendencies of countless Christian artists who perform at pro-life rallys or events supporting Republican figures.
My sense as a reviewer was that Justin’s political leanings had a strong influence on his music. This was before I went to his Myspace page and saw the Obama stuff. Even my 15 year old daughter, who was listening with me to the album, got this impression. Yes, it does come through; even in the music alone, and I couldn’t do an honest review without bringing this fact out.
My comment about our limited rational reasoning was not directed at Justin’s politics, it was directed at politics in general, attesting to the fact that the political realm is based on weak human reasoning, and will bring weak human results. My very point was that good art that makes us think, which is what Justin’s album is, transcends politics in its ability to transform the world, and thus should transcend our political bias as well.
I hear you Roy. Your comments seem justified. Although at face value, your review did seem to ding Justin a bit for his “left leaning” tendencies. But, the truth is, he’s a total hippie anyway, so who can blame you?
Hey, I’ll ding anyone who even hints at the idea that there is hope in and through the political process, hippie, red neck, or wisecracker. It’s time we get past that idea and focus on the work of the kingdom.
I think that politics serves its purpose to advance the work of the kingdom. Is a great deal of it corrupt? Quite. Nevertheless, what man purposes for evil, God often manipulates for the good of us all. Be it in partisan politics, economics, or what have you. Am I jaded about the current state of American politics? Eh…I can be, yes. Am I proudly voting liberal for the GOOD of my country– I believe so, yes. The work of the kingdom and the work here on earth are often the same thing. And sometimes we can use these political parties to bring about the necessary momentum to get good things accomplished on behalf of the kingdom.
I agree with what your saying, Justin. Ironically I just watched the movie Amazing Grace last night. There is a definite example of how the political process can be used for positive change. The mistake the religious right has made is in putting too much confidence and hope in that system, and I believe the rising religious left may be in danger of making the same mistake. God can use people like Wilberforce to change the world, but I think it is vitally important that we put our faith and focus in the work of Jesus Christ in individual hearts and minds. The world is ultimately changed one heart and one mind at a time. Gaining political power is never certain, is very fleeting, and often has unintended consequences.
I’m sorry, that last message was in response to John not Justin.
Does it Resonate with you?