Last winter, a good friend from church begged me several times to listen to some band called, “Psallos,” eventually prevailing. I regret that I didn’t listen to him sooner. My heart overflows when I hear them. My teenagers now beg me to listen to Psallos.
I started out testing them with their album “Hebrews” and later heard “Jude.” Both albums were exceedingly good musically, but most refreshingly, they were music written by people who adore the word of God.
But it would be really unfair to characterize a Psallos album as a music set that related to the Bible. A Psallos album is more like a movie than a record. It’s a movie for your ears. But not a spoken drama… But not NOT a drama… Each album is a fully-orbed story project with dramatic elements, and frequent switches in styles of music. The feeling of some songs is more serious, others more playful, but there is always respect toward the text of scripture. A Psallos album is a creative project so unusual that you really just have to… well… let me put it this way:
I beg you to listen to Psallos. Pick an album.
Lucky for you, a new album was released last Thursday (October 21, 2021). Their latest offering: “Philippians.”
Let me try my best to convey what happens during the album Philippians –
It has a beautiful bit of artwork on the front that hints at the flowing path of a river (that’s an important character in the album). The set is 24 songs – and clocks in at 78 mins long (and is well worth every moment).
I said before it is like watching a movie: imagine a character (maybe the listener) who is throughout the course of the album flipping between radio channels; this device helps to account for the radically different styles that are mixed on this album (like flipping stations) – but it also provides a background story for your mind to relate to, full of static and stress-filled news reports and commercials about making your hum-drum life better – the noise of the radio often presents the listener with news reports focused on crimes that imprison people, and other ones on political stress and upheaval. You may relate. You may have the feeling that you need more joy, or more peace after this.
Enter the character “The River”, – That’s the name of the first song on the album; it is the traditional American folk/spiritual tune “Oh Sisters let’s go down… down to the river and pray…” which is brilliantly used as a preface to the book of Philippians, because Paul and company went down to the river when they first came to Philippi, and there they met Lydia, the dealer in Purple who was converted and who began to fund Paul’s Christian mission.
Enter next the Roman imperial army – there are several spots they have illustrated the imperial overlords of Philippi in the story of Paul – complete with chants of “Dominus Caesar!” and the stirring music of the Roman imperial cult laden ‘Anthem of Rome.’
Psallos albums don’t just sing Bible text – they tell each section as some kind of a story, all strung together. Often one song will cut into, or seem to break into another song in a way that imitates the actual movement of the scriptural text, and so this album expertly weaves together MANY musical genres. Forgive me if I mis-classify something you know well, but in an attempt to give some idea of what crazy weaving they do, here’s a bit of a list of Genres:
- American folk
- American Southern rock (‘O Philippi’)
- Slow contemplative, melancholic piano (‘Of Life and Death’)
- Military Anthem (‘Anthem of Rome’)
- A great 30 something seconds of expertly placed Prog Rock (think Spock’s Beard – ‘Cityzens, Pts 1-3’)
- Country (‘Like Jesus’).
- One of the most heart-rending, and eerie choral pieces I have ever, ever heard: (Sung entirely in New Testament Greek – ‘Hymnos Christou’)
- Hiphop (think Hamilton-style – think glorious, fun – AMAZING – God-honoroing rap – ‘I am Better than You’)
- 80’s (think Blondie – ‘Run Like Earth’)
- Irish folk (‘Cityzens, Pts 4-5’).
- LOT’S of the music (e.g.: ‘For Lydia’ and ‘For Euodia and Syntyche’) is of the level of exquisite film-ready music – big, and multi-layered with many instruments – like the Overture of Lawrence of Arabia. This is an album not of tunes, but of orchestration. And precision. And fun.
One of the coolest things about Psallos is the use of symbolism – like musical-themes as sound-symbols that represents a textual idea that repeats; the repeated sound helps to illustrate the actual structure of a passage naturally to the hearer. Another use of symbolism shows up as repeated metaphors:
- the last song mirrors the first – the river that started with the mustard-seed of Lydia’s faith, is now a Delta, running to the ocean with the idea that the glory of God, through the generosity of the Philippian church, is flowing mightily out into the sea of Gentiles needing the gospel.
- at some point (when rejoicing and peace take over in Phil 4) the listener stops playing with the radio static, turns off the radio and walks out side to joy and peace.
Principal musicians Cody Curtis, Thomas Griffith, and Kelsie Edgren are joined by some otherwise known friends this time: Andrew Peterson, Shai Linne, Dennis Parker (of Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder fame), and Taylor Leonhardt join their tallents to the large ensemble of players and instruments assembled for ‘Philippians’.
Visit their website: Psallos’ Website –
and support them through their Patreon account.
