Last night I saw them play at Toad’s Place, a famous venue here in New Haven. Lots of the great bands (and lots of so-so bands, too) have played here–including U2 in their early years. I saw KOL in 2005 when they opened for U2 on the Vertigo tour. I’d never heard of them and at the time didn’t know any of their songs. I was impressed by their energy, though, and by their tight pants (read my report on that concert here). According to Jared Followill, the bassist, “I mean [U2] called us KFC instead of KOL ’cause we have chicken legs. But in a funny, cool way. They’re the nicest guys.” I mused at the time about what the influence would be given the maturity of U2 as a band, as spiritual men, and on the road with this young band also with spiritual roots but exploring the tensions of faith and the life-style of rock n’ roll fame. As the story goes, the influence was low-key, and likely more powerful as a result. They showed, rather than told or scolded. KOL, for those who don’t know, grew up traveling with a father who preached revivials in the United Pentecostal Church but after troubles with drinking and finallly a divorce, left the ministry. The experience was dramatic for the boys. This from the Rolling Stone interview:

“Everything changed for the three brothers in 1997, when their mother and father divorced — an even bigger taboo in the Pentecostal community than in the Christian world at large — and Leon left the ministry. (Though some have reported that Leon was defrocked, the boys say he resigned on his own because ‘he knew it was time.’) ‘Our parents’ divorce shattered the whole mirage of this perfect little existence the outside world couldn’t touch and couldn’t pollute,’ Nathan says. ‘We realized that our dad, the greatest man we ever knew, in our eyes, was only human. And so are we. People are gonna fuck up. They’re gonna want to experiment with drugs, have premarital sex. This whole new world was open to us’.”

This, you might say, was their introduction to the “broken hallelujah.” The Pentecostal tradition they come out of has an element of purity-lust, a peculiar kind of sinful desire to leave the world into a “perfect little existence,” as Nathan put it. And when this breaks apart, then it can seem a farce. They seemed to think so, running away from God and their past into a life of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Their songs, and their reputation, through their first years as a band were fairly wild. Fast songs about drinking and sex and life on the road fill their first albums. They aren’t without a kind of reflective honesty, however.

Honesty or not, however, their lyrics are not really the point, partly because you can’t really understand them (even fans say that) and partly because Caleb’s voice is so odd that it takes on its own musical quality as part of the songs. Well, that’s not totally true, because on some songs it matters, but largely their effect is emotion. They are an affect-driven band, I think, and that partly accounts for the cries early on that they would again “save rock ‘n roll.” This was certainly true seeing them live for the second time in a small club (Toad’s holds 750 maximum, whereas the Fleet Center is a 20,000 arena). They doors opened at 8 and the opening band only played from 9 to 9:20 and KOL didn’t come on till 10:25. Long wait. We were getting tired and then they came out and played a crashing set for an hour and a half, with really only one slow song. They played one encore that included “Knocked Up”, “Charmer,” and “Slow Night, So Long.”

While they are singing about sex and drinking, and trying hard to look sexy and trying hard to drink while playing, you get the sense they’ve just jumped into cardboard cutouts of rock ‘n roll stereotypes. When guitarist Matt Followill stuck his cigarette into the strings of his guitar at the top of the neck so that it smoked while he played, I thought “Oh, geez, how totally cliche.” But what is interesting to me is the way they are experimenting with how far they can run from the purity of their religious upbringing, and what to do with the tensions. Some examples from interviews:
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Example One:

Interviewer: It’s well documented, of course, that you guys grew up sons of a preacher. Are any of you spiritual in any way today, or even religious?

Nathan: Yeah, we all believe in God, for sure. I think we all still have a lot of the morals that were instilled in us growing up. We’re no saints, by no means.

Example two:

Caleb: Bono said that the most beautiful music, the only relevant music to him, is either someone who is running towards God or running away from it. I think that’s kind of right. All that passion and guilt and all that stuff.”

Suddenly reflective, the singer with a thicket of hair says with disarming honesty: “I don’t consider myself to be a good person. I know I’m on the wrong path, brother. But at least I know, y’know. I almost quit this every day. I might pick up where my dad left off – maybe.” He adds, deadly serious: “I’ve got the stage time down already.”

Example three:

Interviewer: Why did you write a song about Arizona?

Caleb: I hold that place close to my heart. I love the desert and always have. But the story behind that song is kind of bad. I can’t really get into it. It’s about when Nathan and I went to Arizona, and…well, we had quite a few different substances in us, and we decided to go to this brothel. I guess I am telling you now, aren’t I? This really is a heartbreaker. We walked in and I looked around and there was this one girl who was so beautiful that all I could think was, ”What happened in her life that could bring her here?” as opposed to me thinking, ”Yeah! I’ll take that one!”

So you left?

No. I took an ugly one. I knew why she was there.

That’s a pretty heavy story from a preacher’s son.

I think there’s always two sides to your personality, be it when you’re drunk or sober, or at home or away, or whatever. Our song ”On Call” is about the grounded part of you. It says, ”And when I fall to pieces, Lord you know I’ll be there waiting.” You could take that in a Biblical sense. The Bible says that David, or Daniel, or one of those guys, was a man after God’s own heart. But he was quite a messed-up person. So if he’s the man after God’s own heart, well, maybe when you’re at your roughest moment, that’s when He’s watching over you and smiling.

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Okay. If you are still with me, you must be getting the point. One way to go is this black or white, saint or sinner understanding of Christian faith. And KOL grew up with the saint version and are now exploring the sinner side, an extended moment of rebellion rooted in the rupture of their father’s fall from grace. But they are discovering, surprisingly, as did Augustine long ago, that God does not simply abandon you in the midst of your rebellion. The “Hound of Heaven” is still there, and perhaps more persistently that ever. So how the band seeks to integrate this as they go along will be interesting to watch. Caleb, the lead singer, aways has a cross around his neck. And indeed, their song “On Call” is easily their biggest hit to date, in part because of the message which has a sort of cultural and religious resonance (think “Lean On Me” or “Footprints in the Sand”–it is just a popular idea, and one Christian scripture and tradition underline, even if in a bit more complex a way). Here is the song, followed by the lyric:

She said call me now baby, and I’d come a running.
She said call me now baby, and I’d come a running.
If you’d call me now baby then I’d come a running.

I’m on call to be there.
One and all to be there.
And When I fall to pieces.
Lord you know I’ll be there waiting.

To be there.
To be there.

I’m on call to be there.
One and all to be there.
And When I fall to pieces.
Lord you know I’ll be there waiting.

I’m gon’ brawl, so be there.
One for all I’ll be there.
And when they fall to pieces.
Lord you know, I’ll be there laughing.

I’d come a running.
I’d come a running.
I’d come a running.

To be there.
To be there.

I’m on call, to be there.
I’m on call, to be there.
I’m on call, to be there.
I’m on call, to be there.

From one perspective, that of what I’ve called “Karma” or the theology of glory, the band have fallen from the narrow way and Christians should not listen to them. They’ve embraced the devil and his ways. Going to their concerts exposes tender minds and hearts to themes of sex, drugs, drinking, smoking, and more. All worrisome, at least to a majority of Christians. And indeed, I was standing next to people who drank six or more beers during the concert and were smoking pot and were shouting profanity. So by any standards of judgment in terms of acts, the scene was one of acts unbecoming a Christian.

From another perspective, however, while they are twisting and turning the gifts they’ve received from God, they only do what they do because of God’s gifts. And it is very compelling to see the way they are struggling to integrate faith and rock ‘n’ roll–struggling to find a way to run away from God and a kind of broken faith while accounting for the fact that Jesus is running with them. A recent interviewer asked, “What’s the song you all sing together just before going on stage every night?” And Caleb answered, “It’s a gospel song called ‘Just A Little Talk With Jesus.’ [Sings] ‘Now let us have a little talk with Jesus/Let us tell him all about our troubles/He will hear our faintest cry/He will answer by and by/Now when you feel a little prayer wheel turning/And you know a little fire is burning/You will find a little talk with Jesus makes it right’.” Rock ‘n’ Roll is littered with people divided between Jesus and the devil, between the church and the club. It tears people apart. Will it tear the KOL apart, or will they find ways to integrate the gift of faith and their gifts in music? Interesting question, and a question worth following, I think. I have hopes, however, for as Caleb sings in the song, “The Runner,” “I talk to Jesus/ Jesus says I’m okay.”

A next question has to do with judgment. If Christians don’t accept or reject songs or artists or pop culture generally on the basis of “good” or “bad” content, what means of judgment do we have to guide us? Surely not everything is edifying. I’ll reflect on this and my experience talking about it at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, a conservative evangelical school in Ohio that asked me to come and speak on “Imagination and the Kingdom of God.”

+anon