The Fray

When it comes to Christian bands that try to reach the mass public I am sometimes skeptical. After reading Relevant Magazine's interview with The Fray I am pleasantly suprised. They are Christians that are trying to reach the un-churched. Here's a snippet from that interview:

"We’re all Christians, and we all come from Christian backgrounds. We grew up playing worship music in church. I learned to play drums in church. So we all come from a background of being raised in Christian families.

We got to a point where, as far as making our art, we realized that to make Christian music, as far as the music industry, if we’re going to enter the music industry, we can either … In some ways it’s sad that it’s like this, but it’s just the way that it is, but there’s a pretty sharp distinction between Christian music and secular music. Some of the lines are getting blurred now with some bands lately, but there’s still definitely that distinction. There are Christian radio stations, and there’s a lot of labeling going on.

Knowing that, we wanted to steer clear of those labels and a lot of that baggage and make art in way that can relate to Christians and non-Christians. Whether that’s a ministry opportunity or not, that’s great and that’s an extra bonus, but as musicians, we didn’t want to limit ourselves to just making Christian music.

We all grew up listening to Christian music, and once we got old enough, we discovered that there was this whole world of music outside of music that our moms bought for us.

As Christians, we set out to make really honest art that is relatable and that’s understandable for people, regardless of their religious orientation or faith background. Isaac grew up writing Christian songs in a Christian language about Christian themes and Bible verses, and then he started making friend who weren’t Christians. They couldn’t understand what he was singing about and they didn’t know … they couldn’t relate to it, and they didn’t understand it. There are some really great Christian bands out there that we really respect and are really good at making Christian music for Christians, and that’s a really good thing for some people. But for us, we’re called to make music for more than just the Church, to make music for the unchurched people and hopefully speak a bit of life into them."

Check them out. You've heard their two big hits - Over My Head and How To Save a Life all over the place. The rest of the album is worth buying. I hope they are here to stay. We need more folks like this around.