A couple of years ago I heard a song of a band called Switchfoot. Excellent stuff, great guitars, great drums, some awesome bass playing - definitely worth the buy. Some of the lyrics were perhaps a bit cheesy for my taste, but I can handle the odd love song.

After a while, though, I realized that most of the song I had thought were love songs were not. As it turned out, Switchfoot was a Christian band - that I found all their guitar tabs at the Christian Guitar site sort of gave them away. I’m very skeptical about all things religion and although the discovery didn’t ruin the music it certainly made me read the lyrics differently.

And now it looks like I’ve fallen down into the same trap again. Enter stage left; The Almost.

A while back I heard their track “Say it Sooner” on radio.wazee. A great tune with an incredible drive. On Monday Wazee started playing “Souther Weather” from the same album. Another great track, which made me listen to parts of the rest of the album on their official band site and eventually I bought the album through iTunes since it was available without DRM protection.

Even though Switchfoot is a Christian band they do not try to force through any Christian message in their lyrics. At least it’s not so obvious that I’ve heard it. Maybe it’s subliminal, who knows. Hallelujah! It turned out that the same is not the case for The Almost, as they make pretty obvious in “Dirty and Left Out”.

The song starts off as a love song as well, at lest that’s what it sounds like to the untrained ear.

Hello, I swear I won’t be too long / Hello, I promise I’ll be real strong / Wait up, I just wanna tell you / Hold up, why are you still here?

As with many love songs, the lyrics do not make very much sense. What is this guy doing? Maybe he is going to a party and promises his girlfriend he will behave and not have his dirty ways with any of the women at the party. That sounds plausible, so we’ll stick to that.

I’ve been dirtier than you wanna know / I’ve left earlier than you’ll ever know

Now the guy has obviously returned from said party and, whops, it looks like he had his dirty ways with someone.

Why do you wanna be all listening to me / Why do you spread your arms and tell me I’m free / Why do you wanna be in my life / In my life

What’s happening now? Hard to tell. Is she leaving him or not? This is so confusing!

I’ve been dirtier than you wanna know / I’ve left earlier than you’ll ever know

It’s still confession time, it seems.

Jesus, Jesus / There’s something about your name

Where the hell did that come from? Maybe he has a Mexican friend who stopped by to help out in this sticky situation and the song writer, running out of ideas and inspiration, decided to tell that he thinks Jesus is a rather funky name.

Master, saviour, Jesus

Wrong again. This is not a love song, is a hymn. Not surprisingly, I’m skipping this track when I’m listening to the album. But the rest of the album shows once again that some Christian bands make really good music. You just have to try to ignore the lyrics a little. Unless you buy the music for the lyrics, of course.