i wrote this today about page france, and there song chariot...
Thinking about freakytigger's recent discovery of Sufjan, and how he did not really understand the Jesus stuff, he is English. 80 per cent of Americans are Xian’s, and most suburban indie saddos are as well--Sufjan and the others are an attempt to find the genuine message of Christ, an earnest exploring of tender religious devotion... (And its two days before Christmas, the occasional reminder of why some of us find the holiday important is all right, amongst the Santas and hippos, I figure)

It is hard to explain to Europe, North America's obsession with Jesus. It is even harder to explain the popularity of young and smart creative types wrestling with a neo-orthodox Jacob, parental rebellion and dissatisfaction with the culture only go so far.

I cannot explain it, because I feel so much--and others who have tried, have been bogged down with variations of pop anthropology (the excellent Anne Powers on the alternative worship services at Mars Hill.) But to understand it, is to listen to it--and while I am sure that he has heard the Danielson Familee, and Sufjan, and he has gone into the freak folk missions in the 60s, through Gareth Lee, and I will not inflict praise and worship here, I want him to listen to this.

Page France, I know nothing about, and it is much better then the other update of Chariot symbolism this year (Gretchen Wilson). This song, about the rapture, and about the end of the world, is so tender, hopeful, optimistic, and free of fire and brimstone. It is about what people feel in the heart of hearts, to use a cliché.

In Matthew Christ tells us to go into the closet, and close the door to pray--there is something so hard about this...it is easy to mock lo-fi emo boys with their 4 tracks, singing love songs to girls who will never really love them, imagine finding a girl who will love you forever, all of that trepidation about adolescent desire remains, but their is a surety there too

and i wanted to expand the bit on gretchen wilson.

i know the authentic vs inauthentic debate is long dead, and artifice has won, but i keep hearing the two songs together, b/c of the way that i tunes works, and i do not believe wilson, i think its too am packed, too perfect, too clean, and tries too hard on its weirdness, its genre jumping.

i keep thinking of it against being religous, as having the plasticy (forgive me for using that word) hipness of nugod types--another version of that praise and worship is really rock and roll shit--and then i keep thinking about it, the jesus music i really liked this year, was all folky, simple, hymn singing, and people with guitars--and that might be where i am at, but it made me think...

where are the shiny post modern jesus masterpeices, either in country or something else==kayne doing jesus walks is the closest i could fnid