LUCID FORGE

Two things come to mind when hearing an Anberlin song for the first time: the power-chord-heavy guitars, and Stephen Christian’s vocals. Soaring above the sonic frey, and situated in the upper male-soprano-stratosphere of hard-rock singing, Christian’s voice cuts through the L.A.-based band’s sound like a hot knife through butter. Surprising then, to hear one of his vocal heroes is bass-rich Irish singer Morrissey.

“He has a tone like no one else. When you hear him, no one wonders who it is. I love that.” Christian also names Jeff Buckley, whose much-lauded 1994 album Grace was “the single-most influential album of my life. His range, it’s almost poetic… his voice was just incredible.”



Christian was raised in Winter Haven, Florida, and got his first exposure to music while attending church. “I was influenced and surrounded by church,” he says, “I loved it, ‘cause it was so soothing, and partly ‘cause my Grandma was there. Church taught me harmony; a lot of people around me had melody down, and I’d go to the third or the sixth note, figuring out where it’s going next. It was a huge advantage.”

The singer comes from a family with vocal pedigree. Aside from church exposure, his aunt was an opera singer who made a name for herself in Chicago before touring around the world. “Now she lives in Kelowna and does private voice lessons for huge stars.” Just recovering from the throes of a terrible cold, Christian checked himself into a Denver-area hospital three weeks ago to see about his persistent cold, which in the end, turned out to be laryngitis. It resulted in the cancellation of a show, but he’s on the mend now, however tenuous. “It’s not like I can take a week off,” he says wryly.

Anberlin formed in 2002 after Christian’s first band, SaGosh 24/7 disbanded. They were approached by independent label Tooth and Nail shortly thereafter, and released their first album, Blueprints for the Black Market, in 2003. They released two more albums, Never Take Friendship Personal (2005) and Cities (2007), and have been steadily touring and promoting their work online. New Surrender, the band’s latest album, was released in September and debuted at #13 on the Billboard Hot 200 Music Chart. They are currently headlining a tour that also features There For Tomorrow, Straylight Run, and Scary Kids Scaring Kids. At a recent stop in Toronto, the 28-year-old singer sat down and shared his thoughts about music, inspiration, and the surreal nature of celebrity.

In-person, Christian is as honest and earnest in his approach as he is singing. Any charges of oblique lyrics or poetic flights of fancy lyrically simply don’t stand up; Christian’s words are full of youthful zeal, contemplative confusion, and a desire for honesty in the image-laden world of the music industry. “They’re all first-person observations,” says Christian, “I’ve never written a song thinking, ‘Wow, this would be a catchy chorus.” It’s more like, “This is what I’m going through, this is what I see…” Lyrically, Christian says New Surrender is “definitely my most motivational album, it’s “Get off your butt and go do something!” Every song is aimed at a different situation or problem in world.”  Produced by Neal Avron, who is known for working with such big names as The Wallflowers, Fallout Boy, and Lincoln Park, Anberlin’s fourth album is a highly energetic work with bombastic rock anthems (like the blistering “The Resistance”, the album’s opening track), power ballads (“Retrace”), electro-rock (“Blame Me! Blame Me!”) and breezy rock-pop (“Haight Street”). It’s the sort of album parents might accept being on their kids’ i-pods, helped in no small part by the affirmative lyrical content and catchy, musically solid arrangements.

The journey from the band’s last album, Cities, to their latest release was a hard, if positive experience. Anberlin added guitarist/songwriter Christian McAlhaney to the lineup, who had previously played with alt-rock band Acceptance, and forged ahead trying to bring a brighter mood. Christian himself describes Cities as “an egocentric album. It was just me and myself, my inner demons… and it felt bad. It was a low point in my life.” With New Surrender, he wanted to get away from the navel-gazing and instead “write stories, and experiences I’ve had of being around people, and ask questions like, “Where did we cross the line between art and self?” That’s what it felt like when I’d listen back to it.”



Moving from Tooth and Nail records, an independent label, to Universal Music in 2007 didn’t change Anberlin’s approach to its work. The process, while initiating daunting, actually proved to be stress-free. “We didn’t want to change mindsets,” Christian says, “we wanted to do the same things, and play just as hard.” He acknowledges that there was pressure, but it was mainly self-inflicted. “We’ve had to progress or die. We couldn’t repeat the same album over and over, and we don’t want to. It felt great to be able to go out there and challenge ourselves. There was no pressure to write ‘the single’ –they didn’t want Anberlin-meets-Backsteet Boys, it wasn’t like that. It was just, “Hand us the record when you’re done”, so we gave it to them, and they were stoked. We wouldn’t have traded it for anything.”

In a recent interview, Christian described Anberlin as a “blue collar band.” What with the polarization of classes lately, it was a timely comment. The singer says he wasn’t trying to create a stir, but underline the band’s work ethic. “We’re touring for nine or ten months of the year, in vans and buses all the time. Our first gig was in front of sixteen people! We’ve been aggressively working our way up. It was never one big huge thing that suddenly got us noticed. It’s been slow and steady, up the proverbial ladder, rung by rung, showing people, “Hey, we can make a name, we worked, nobody handed us anything.” It feels a lot more rewarding. And it means more longevity.”

While some critics have been eager to paint the band as being part of the burgeoning Christian rock movement, the lanky lead singer scoffs at the notion. “Since the existence of time, people have wanted to label things.” Ironically, even as he turns away from religious labels, he uses a biblical comparison, that “even Adam, in the garden of Eden, (labeled) animals.” Still, he has a few pop culture references in his pocket too, namely Bob Dylan. “Years ago, people were constantly labeling him, but he always said, “I’m not folk, I’m not political, I’m not in a box.” It’s nothing new. So for me, we never picked a band or picked a sound –that’s for journalists and critics, that’s their job –but it’s something we’ve never done, and will never do.”

The turn away from labels and easy definitions is perhaps why Christian is so uncomfortable with the invasion of privacy that comes with being so honest in Anberlin’s music. “It feels like we have killed mystique… we make videos, we have a Youtube channel. I mean, if Morrissey had one, I’d be so bummed! There’s that air of mystery, of bigger-than-life. We have Wikipedia pages about us saying what we do and who’s in our lives. There’s nothing you can’t find out online –you just feel like, “Have I lost my identity?

While he’s deeply grateful for the fame and notoriety Anberlin have received, he says that with the advent of online culture, and the explosion of celebrity worship resulting from it, “nothing is sacred anymore. I’ve never cracked or yelled, but it’s hard to keep composure sometimes. I try to do my best by the band, by our fans and by everyone… because I don’t want to have to feel like I’m putting on a show or an act.”