Copious Notes

rctalk: Anberlin's 'New Surrender'

Anberlin are drummer Nate Young, bassist Deon Rexroat, singer Stephen Christian, guitarists Joey Milligan and Christian McAlhaney. Photo by James Minchin, courtesy Universal Republic.

Anberlin | New Surrender

The press kit for Anberlin's Universal Republic debut, New Surrender, identifies the group as, "one of the truly viable indie-to-major success stories ready to blow in 2008." Of course, Christian pop fans know you could replace "indie" with "Christian," and still have an accurate statement.

Anberlin released its first three studio albums and one b-sides package on Tooth & Nail Records, the launching pad for acts such as P.O.D. and Underoath that have easily walked between the Christian and mainstream markets.

Anberlin has done that too, particularly with its 2007 release Cities.

The major label jump finds the Central Florida act as you would expect a band making this transition: sounding as confident, polished and nimble as ever. There is also no dilution of Anberlin's thoughtful meditations on life and faith, that have rarely been overt but always been challenging to those who took time to listen.

Anberlin is a neopolitan package of sounds from some solid post-punk pop to lovely acoustic-based vocal tracks such as The Unwinding Cable Car, one of the most inventive, sublime cuts on Christian radio in the past year.

New Surrender starts out on an aggressive note with The Resistence and rocks through the brainy and intriguing Breaking. The strongest signal these two songs send is that New Surrender will be owned by the guitarists Christian McAlhaney and Joey Milliagan. Considering they have just been together since the release of Cities, these axe men have become quite a pair in a brief time.

Being a major label debut, this disc does resurrect a previous hit, The Feel Good Drag from 2005's Don't Take Friendship Personal. It fits in, but also amplifies Anberlin's growth, seen in songs such as the symphonic Retrace and Breathe, poppy Burn Out Bright (Northern Lights) and Younglife, and apocalyptic Miserable Visu (Ex Malo Bonum).

New Surrender is an album that immediately starts to grow on you, and rewards repeated listenings with deeper insights and surprises, as well as a lot of fun. It's exactly what a band reaching out to a wider audience needs.

Also out today: Amy Grant's Christmas Collection releases today (we're going to do a Christmas disc roundup soon) as is Newsboys' Live in Houston. With Tobymac's live disc, Houston just seems to be the hip place to record in front of a crowd lately.

Speaking of Live, don't forget Seabird is at UK next Wednesday.We have a story about the Erlanger band coming up this weekend. Also, we reviewed Fireflight last week at Lexington Christian.

Review: 'Rent Filmed Live on Broadway'

I should tell you: Frankfort's Will Chase as Roger connects with Renée Elise Goldsberry as Mimi in Rent Filmed Live on Broadway. Below: Adam Kantor as Mark sings for the cameras. Bottom: Tracie Thoms as Joanne and Kantor in The Tango Maureen. Copyrighted photos by Casey Stoufer for Sony Pictures.

This is how Rent should be seen on film.

In 2005, the Rent movie came out with great anticipation, and, to a lot of viewers like me, great disappointment. Chris Columbus' film did have great moments. La Vie Boheme and Jesse L. Martin's reprise of I'll Cover You stand out to me as iconic movie musical scenes.

But the movie picked apart the flow of Jonathan Larson's creation, making it more of a standard issue movie musical than the rock opera that it was, and the film as a whole felt hollow. It left a lot of us telling people who wondered why we are so enraptured with this show, "You have to see the stage version."

Well, the Broadway production is closed now, but this weekend, you can see Rent Filmed Live on Broadway at movie theaters around the country. The film was made during some of Rent's final Broadway performances, earlier this month. As a bonus for we Central Kentuckians, Frankfort native Will Chase plays Roger, the rocker struggling to connect with others while he faces the inevitability of AIDS.

Chase's interpretation is different from the Broadway Cast Recording and film Roger, Adam Pascal. He's a bit more subtle, with less of an angry edge. But the internal struggle is clear, and we can hear why Chase has become a go-to-guy for Broadway rock musicals.

He has a strong counterpart in Renee Elise Goldsberry as Mimi, who enters with a gorgeous, full voice in Light my Candle, and never flags.

For the uninitiated, Rent is a Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about residents of the Alphabet City neighborhood in New York in the early 1990s. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La Boheme, and these Bohemians struggle with poverty, AIDS and personal travails while trying to pursue their artistic ambitions. Adding to Rent's legend was lyricist and composer Jonathan Larson's tragic death from an aortic aneurysm hours after the final dress rehearsal for Rent's Off-Broadway opening.

All of the film cast is strong, and embodies the energy that made this show go for 12 years on Broadway. Rentheads will have no problem locking in on the story, while people more oriented to the movies may have to work a little bit to wrap their heads around some of the representational theater that takes place. 

Director Michael Warren and his camera crew did seem to have a little trouble capturing some of the full-stage ensemble numbers, particularly the title tune and the Christmas Bells that leads into Over the Moon. But Moon is one of the pieces that is captured exquisitely -- even got some in the crowd mooing on Thursday night at Fayette Mall -- in addition to Tango Maureen; One Song Glory, where we see how beautifully stage director Michael Greif isolated Roger on stage; Contact, filmed to accentuate its ghostly wildness; Will I? and Without You.

The last two, from Larson's music and lyrics to Warren's camera work, really help illustrate the big themes and personal stories that helped Rent pave the way for Broadway to address topics that were once taboo and make people see themselves and their friends in this New York story. That's the theme we also see in Seasons of Love, Rent's signature song that takes those huge topics of love, seasons and a year and breaks them down into 525,600 minutes. The final rendition of Seasons in this film also features the original Broadway cast of Rent.

Hopefully a DVD of Rent Filmed Live on Broadway is coming. If asked, "what is it about Rent?," the best answer still is to tell people to try to see it live. But this film is a solid document of this piece of musical theater history.

~ In addition to Will Chase, read more about Kentuckians in the national spotlight in Lu-Ann's Kentucky News Review.

Review & pics: Fireflight at Lexington Christian Academy

Fireflight lead singer Dawn Richardson performs with the band at Lexington Christian Academy on Sept. 24, 2008. Below: Me in Motion's Seth Mosley. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Wednesday was a school night. But hey, if you had your homework done, there was nothing wrong with rocking out for a couple of hours.

That seemed to be the philosophy behind a concise and energetic show by Fireflight and Me in Motion at Lexington Christian Academy last night. The concert was booked at the last minute by Ichthus Ministries when a date opened on the Orlando band's schedule.

That put one of the hottest bands in Christian rock on the LCA stage to perform a just-over-hour-long set topped by their smash Unbreakable, an interpretation of the adulterous woman story from the Gospels. Led by charismatic frontwoman Dawn Richardson, the band wasted little time getting on stage and getting cranked up -- school night, after all -- showing the harder edges of a group that's been getting a lot of radio play this year.

Stand Up, early in the set, got the crowd going with its descending riff that even sparked a mosh pit for a few minutes. So Help Me God kept the energy going until the band slowed it down for a brief Bible message and its power ballad Forever.

Fireflight is still a relatively young act, enjoying chart topping success while still asking for donations to a tour bus fund. An hour seemed to be the right length for the group, rounded out by guitarists Justin Cox and Glenn Drennen, bassist Wendy Drennen (Glenn's wife) and drummer Phee Shorb. Their energy never flagged as they seemed to feed off the largely teenage crowd in the the theater, and their songs were distinctive, largely thanks to Richardson's theatrical interpretations. She did momentarily go flat, though since that vocal kerfuffle also befell Me in Motion's Seth Mosley, you had to wonder if it was a glitch in the sound system.

Anyway, Me in Motion, based out of Ashville, Ohio, got the evening off to a spirited start. The trio did not appear much older than the kids they were playing for. But they did have a grasp for the basics of post-punk pop rock that should serve them well as they grow.

Here are some more pics from last night, and there are others if you hit the "continue reading" link.

Fireflight bassist Wendy Drennen whips into a number.

Front row fans capture some memories.