Under the Radar: Bodies of Water

God knows that, over the years, a good deal of piffle has been committed to vinyl, disc and digital bit in the name of “Christian rock.” For every denominationally-neutral deep thinker such as Damien Jurado and Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan or kooky, wide-eyed quester like the Danielson Famile, we’ve also witnessed God-centric narrowcasters such as Creed attempting to alter the brainwaves of the unenlightened through the “gift” of their music. It’s enough to give the genre a bad name — a notion with which Bodies of Water bandleader David Metcalf wholly agrees.

“The four core members [of Bodies of Water] are Christians,” Metcalf explains one recent afternoon from his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park, where he lives with his wife Meredith, who is also the band's keyboardist. “But we’re not really in the Christian music scene at all — not part of that subculture. Three quarters of the band grew up in an evangelical Christian tradition, and not to really get into it, but we take issue with some of the insularity, especially the politics associated with it.” Metcalf’s two dogs bark excitedly in the background as he finishes his thought. “I don’t really think it has a lot to do with our music, either; it’s not like we came up playing churches or only to Christian audiences. If anything, our songs deal with faith in a more mystical way. The references could just as easily be Jewish, you know?”

Given his band’s “Godspell meets Elephant Six” musical underpinnings, it’s easy to understand why Metcalf takes pains to create some distance between Bodies of Water and a Christian audience that's typically less accepting of willful eccentricity. While the group’s debut, Ears Will Pop and Eyes Will Blink (independently released in 2007 but re-released nationally through Secretly Canadian last month), owes a major debt to the American gospel tradition and certainly bears the hallmarks of young people on a journey of the soul, it’s a record aimed squarely at the Williamsburg set — an album of shock-inducing sweets for the ears, drizzled onto a thick chorus of vocals and multi-part drums, keys and guitars.

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“We just see ourselves making music. I’d be worried if it came across like I knew what the deal was with the world.”

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Sure, earnestly-delivered lines such as “We are co-resistors, all resisting Satan’s fingers,” “I turned my face from God” and “Then He spoke and the locusts came” pop out of the mix from time to time, but they’re accompanied by theatrical, lushly-orchestrated arrangements that call to mind a less-messianic Polyphonic Spree or a home-schooled Arcade Fire. The band’s four core members are surrounded by a loosely-assembled volunteer army of contributors, expanding their ranks to ten-plus in a live setting as they meticulously craft the soundtrack for the next generation of true believers — even if those beliefs aren’t articulated in the form of a hard-wired manifesto.

“You literally have to condescend to be didactic, and none of us feel like we’re in that place at all,” Metcalf adds. “We just see ourselves making music. I’d be worried if it came across like I knew what the deal was with the world.”

Along these lines, the band’s next album — still untitled, but already recorded and due out in July — takes the path less traveled. The group opted to record it in the Metcalfs' home using a less-constructed, more jam-oriented compositional method than the one employed on their debut, which essentially featured songs Metcalf composed and then taught the band. “When we started, I’d write all the songs and tell everyone what to play,” Metcalf confirms. “On this one, I still have the germs of the basic ideas for the songs, but it’s become more collaborative, with everyone coming up with their own parts and helping to work out the transitions between the various sections. The ideas I bring aren’t as concrete anymore; we have to work together to figure it all out. It’s a bit more free-floating.”

This approach may sound counterintuitive given the highly-architected, if notably joyous, veneer of the debut, but has nevertheless proven inspiring to the band as they’ve progressed. The change in venue hasn’t hurt, either. “The guy recording [this album] had a proper studio but didn’t get his permits, so we’re basically using a portable solution,” Metcalf laughs. “We’ve turned the house into a studio — one of the bedrooms has all our gear, the drums are in the living room, the bass amp is in the kitchen, the guitar amp is in the bedroom.”

This “everything but the kitchen sink” approach seems well-suited to Metcalf and his group of like-minded co-conspirators, whose mystically-minded music is only becoming more sophisticated and complex as it evolves.