While it’s not exactly a new theme for Switchfoot, disapproval of the materialism that is rampant in American culture is a strong thread running through Oh Gravity. With much of American politics focussed on keeping a certain level of prosperity for the higher classes of Americans over peaceful relations with the rest of the world or justice for the poor, money seems to be the American dream. On the track of that name (“American dream”) Jon Foreman announces that such an attitude is not his idea of freedom.

Of course freedom is a particularly American obsession, but the freedom to simply make and spend money—which Foreman more than once refers to as a machine—seems like a pretty hollow dream. In “4:12” he sings of waking up in the early hours and having that nagging sensation that, while we pursue the often-necessary tasks of earning a living by “waiting tables and parking cars,” there is more to life. The song ends with a shouted coda, “Souls aren’t built of stone.” In “Faust, Midas and myself” he combines the two stories of Faust and Midas to suggest that making deals with the Devil for the sake of gold backfires, as “a heart that is made of gold can’t really beat at all.”

If this all sounds like preaching, the point is that Foreman mostly manages to speak of the perils of modern life subtly and artfully, such as the line from “Head Over Heels”—“we both know what these open arms are for”—which works by association: of course, keeping in mind the line’s context, we know he means embracing someone rather than stuff. The music itself is typically Switchfoot—loud but without losing the sound that’s like a homecoming—appropriately, as the chorus pivots on the line, “You’re the one place I call home.”

“Head over heels,” like “American dream,” “Awakening” and “Burn out bright,” has the kind of bursting chorus that Switchfoot do well, with Foreman screaming like Dave Grohl, though he has a voice more like the nasal sear of Kurt Cobain’s than Grohl’s shredding growl. The highly-revving ‘Burn Out Bright’, with its chewy, treacly guitar tone matches Grohl and co., and its lyrics are a clever, positive twist on the idea of the phrase “it’s better to burn out than fade away.” One could also read into it Jesus’ call to be lights on a hill.

But there is subtlety musically here as well. While the straight-forward lyrics about the death of a friend are certainly not Foreman’s best, “Yesterdays” seeps in after the lingering murmurs of guitar ending “Head over heels,” with understated guitar chords like surf lapping on a shore. The guitar in the chorus glints like sunshine on water.

Such simple but not simplistic touches run through the album. “Head Over Heels” seems influenced by Radiohead, with little audio effects playing in the background. The stop-start drums and climbing bass that begin verse two are straight from “Subterranean homesick alien.”

“Dirty second hands” is something else again, and a little more complex than the pop-punk tendencies of other songs. This is their “Kashmir;” like the Led Zeppeling song it’s both blues and eastern-influenced, with a thumping sound. Again, unravelling the web of Foreman’s lyrics yields further dissatisfaction with what this time is termed the “American rot.”

Such concerns prove to be a plus for Foreman, as the album seems all the stronger from this central theme. He has enough lyrical ability to keep interesting the message that, as he sings, “when success is equated with excess, the ambition for excess wrecks us.” This is a problem Christians are not immune to, as the whole prosperity gospel thing attests. And Christians shouldn’t get caught up in the idea that spiritual sickness can be cured by buying more Christian books and CDs. Since you could argue Switchfoot (as Christian “product”) are part of the whole Christian subculture industry, it’s probably brave of them to be saying so.