Album review: Delirious' 'Kingdom of Comfort'

Delirious is (L-R) Jon Thatcher (bass), Tim Jupp (keyboards), Martin Smith (lead vocals), Stu G (guitars) and Stew Smith (drums). By David Dobson | EMI Christian Music Group.

Sorry to be a coupla days late with the weekly review. Clooney-mania in Maysville and some other things put us behind. But here goes.

You might feel guilty listening to Kingdom of Comfort on your pricey, high-capacity iPod. That wasn't exactly Delirious' intention with the thought-provoking song about the material and often isolated world we live in and the terrific album of the same name, a collection of new vertical classics from the Brit rockers.

With album cover art featuring a spilled shopping cart, there is an unmistakable indictment of consumer culture, but the lyrics address it as a comfort that keeps Christians from ministry-- from going forth into the world -- and lures them into unwittingly supporting injustice:

I rob myself of innocence
With the poison of indifference
I buy my stuff at any cost
With a couple of clicks I pay the cost
'Cause what I gain is someone else's loss

It is hardly a comfortable place for the band to go in a Christian pop culture that usually takes aim at easier targets to sell and often promotes consumption as conspicuously as Madison Avenue. But the band does it smartly, in a song that can haunt you as you make decisions about how to use money and time.

It's something of an extension of Our God Reigns from 2005's The Mission Bell, Delirious' last album of new material -- recall the lyric about how an order of Chinese take out could pay for an AIDS patient's medicine? The men of Delirious seem to have something on their minds.

One of those things is definitely making some great worship rock, a logical place to go for a band that has blazed the genre's trail. There are definite possibilities for joining Our God, I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, Majesty and pretty much the rest of the Delirious catalog as worship classics.

But Kingdom of Comfort, which releases April 1, really excels when it's at its most challenging, see the title track, or sonically adventurous, see the Radiohead-esque flourish at the end of How Sweet the Name. Delirious is in a good place for an established band, giving fans a lot of what they expect in the soaring, passionate rock, but clearly continuing to incorporate new ideas into its music. They don't let themselves get comfortable, which is good for us.

Out this week: It's another relatively quiet release week with Starfield's I Will Go being the marquee release. Next month, look for new Hawk Nelson, P.O.D. and Run Kid Run, among others.

Concerts:

4Him's Mark Harris at Northeast Christian Church on Friday, March 28. (That would be tomorrow.)

Newsboys at Pikeville's Eastern Kentucky Expo Center at 6 p.m. April 6.

This is a little ways off still, but Hawk Nelson, Run Kid Run and Jeffrey Dean play Winchester's George Rogers Clark High School July 5.

Comments

[maira alejandra]

hola como estan solo quiero decir que soy una super fan de ustedes y me encanta en la forma como cantan se que DIOS tiene grandes cosas para ustedes me encanto el ultimo concierto que hiciero en colombia son lo mejor me despido DIOS los bendiga adios