My Creative Apathy

15th August 2009

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My top 10 “Desert Island” albums- number 3

#3 Redemption’s Son- Joseph Arthur

“If you weren’t real, I would make you up”

Joseph Arthur - Honey and the Moon

Sorry for the long delay between top 10 album posts.  Originally I thought it would take me about a month or two to go through all of these.  I started counting back from 10 last year on September 1st, so unless I really pound out the top 2, it is going to take me longer than a year.  Oh well.

My number 3 selection comes from one of my favorite artists, Joseph Arthur.  Recently someone asked me what music I like and after saying that “The Beatles are my favorite band,” the first person I mentioned was Joseph Arthur.  He has that “tortured soul/misunderstood genius” thing going on that a lot of great artists do.  I remember when Mariah and I saw him perform at the Troubadour for the first time thinking two things: 1) during the concert I remember thinking “I want to live here.  I want to get my stuff and just move into this concert” and 2) afterwards I told Mariah “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he died of a drug overdose or suicide.”

At the time I didn’t know a ton about Joseph Arthur.  I had been introduced to him by hearing his beautiful song “Honey and the Moon” on one of the soundtracks for the TV show The OC.  Since the first concert at The Troub (I have seen him there 2 or 3 other times since then) I have come to realize that Joseph’s music explores a beautiful balance between the dark corners of human existence and messages of hope and faith.

Redemption’s Son as an album is a perfect example of that balance.  In the title track which opens the album, Arthur describes a character who thinks “Jesus is my only friend, No one else knows who I am” and who is struggling to overcome the inherited struggles of his father:

I know I’ll never make it on the cross 
Spend my days looking for what my daddy lost 
He was too proud to have a boss 
Sold himself out but he couldn’t afford the cost

The chorus of the song sets the tone for the entire album when Arthur asks,

Angel of love
Shine a light on us 
I was born to be 
Redemption’s Son

Themes of struggle followed by redemption flow through each song.  In fact the last song, You’ve Been Loved forms a sort of thematic bookend with the first when it says:

It’s always hard to admit 
Most days you feel like you don’t exist 
Temptation sneaks past your fists 
Until the devil won’t let you resist 

Oblivion is what you want

But you’ve been loved

This is a rare album in that it has 16 songs (most artists seem to be trying to get away with 10 or 11 recently) and not one of the 16 songs is bad or even mediocre.  One of the ways I judge an album from an artist who has released multiple albums is to say, “If I were to make a greatest hits album for this artist, how many songs from this album would appear on the greatest hits?”  Joseph Arthur is a prolific musician whose discography includes 8 full length albums and 11 ep’s and I would have to put at least 6-8 songs from this album onto my Joseph Arthur greatest hits collection.

If you are interested, you can read a short review I did of my second Joseph Arthur concert at Relevant Magazine dot com

You can buy Redemption’s Son on iTunes or here, although for some strange reason the track listings are slightly different.  The version I have has the track listing as shown on iTunes.

Tagged: Joseph Arthurdesert islandMusicLive