Album: My Paper Heart
Artist: Francesca Battistelli
Label: Fervent Records
Sounds like: Natalie Grant, Brooke Fraser

The pretty, circling instrumental number that opens the new Jars album is obviously ripped off from Coldplay’s most recent album. This is a shame, firstly because it is so unnecessary. Jars of Clay have one of the most distinctive voices in Christian music, and they have become so, to their credit, by writing generally thoughtful and subtle songs, often influenced by traditional American music. Rather than make a watered-down, “Christian” version of secular music, they made pop music like the best of traditional spiritual music. This was most obvious on Redemption Songs but the last album Good Monsters introduced a more aggressive side to their sound. Now they have shifted up a gear again, influenced by the neo-80s rock revival. This could also be seen as mere “borrowing” but they do it so well, and make it their own. In the second song “Weapons,” the production is noticeably brash, with the instruments front and centre. “Heaven” is jaw-dropping, with its retro keys and high vocal, like an escapee from a Killers album. “Don’t Stop” has sharp Franz Ferdinand guitars and a bubblegum pop chorus, while “Closer,” like The Killers, mixes energy with longing. In “Closer,” we see the typical lyrical brilliance, with Dan Haseltine reeling off a list of clever romantic metaphors, while in “Heaven,” poetic lyrics like “We’re hunters and lions, we are submarines” invite a second look. Other songs are less opaque but no less thoughtful. Typically, the band is always digging below what lies on the surface. One of the slower numbers, “Headphones,” while at first glance about the simple pleasures of pop music, questions the cocooning effect of the iPod age. Good Monsters was great, and maybe this is more so—a lengthy, considered, varied, ambitious and extremely likeable album.

Nicks rating: 3/5