Brentwood / Bmg
2003
Who We Are Instead
About This Album
For 2002's Eleventh Hour, Jars of Clay seemed to transfer the inherent power of their music from soulful vocals and grassroots gospel to the din of ragged electric guitars and anxious drum machines. That wasn't a bad decision, necessarily, but the album did seem to be more of a mood piece than anything. For Who We Are Instead, the band settled into the comfortable Tennessee environs of its own Sputnik studio and set about tuning up those old acoustic guitars. The resulting 13 songs still nod to modernism with slick production and the occasional twinge of programming. But where the electronics of Eleventh tracks like "Disappear" or "Revolution" seemed to cast a shadow, the gritty, percolating bottom end of Who We Are Instead's "Trouble Is" adds resolve to the song's slide-guitar tale of darkness and light. "My heart ain't built to stay," vocalist Dan Haseltine sings in an appropriately world weary tone. "Jesus told me so." It's in this way that Jars of Clay unites their own beliefs with the larger church of American roots music. "Amazing Grace" (with its fabulous guest shot from vocalist Ashley Cleveland) is another signpost on that long U.
Track List (try tracks 1,7,9,10 and 11)

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