Jon Foreman - Summer

Genre rock Publisher Lowercase People Records External Links Jon Foreman Website

Anytime a member of a successful group releases a solo record, one can’t help but compare it with the work of the band as a whole, but in Jon Foreman’s latest offering, Summer EP, the defining sound of Switchfoot is nowhere to be found.  In the last of four seasonal EPs, Foreman continues refining his solo acoustic presence.

  While Switchfoot is known for packing its electric guitar-led punch in its uplifting rock, Foreman drops that demeanor to instead spotlight his songwriting with his crooning vocals.  Without the majestically soaring guitars of Switchfoot behind his resonating vocals, Foreman’s softer ballads fall flat on their knees.  The band’s sentiment is best expressed in its pop and drive while Foreman tries to carry the same sentiment, but softer, and simpler.

  An entirely acoustic album, Summer is at its best when it lives up to the vibrancy of its titled season.  During the lazily up-tempo numbers, Foreman comes off as effortlessly divine, inspiring hope and dispelling spiritual blindness.  While Summer is perhaps his most Christian offering, it also seems it is his least intimate, but that is to the album’s benefit, as, in this case, intimacy leads only toward the slower missteps of the record.

A unique embellishment of instrumentation fills in the gaps around Foreman’s emptier solo sounds.  This is most notable in the brass fills on the album’s opener, “A Mirror Is Harder to Hold,” where, without the trumpet’s grace, the track would sound plain and bare.  The addition of a female vocal on “The House of God Forever,” hints toward an expansion in his musical breadth.

Foreman clearly has the songwriting chops.  “Instead Of a Show,” perhaps the least entertaining song on the EP, is very catchy and is quite prone to a whistle.  The song also presents a bit of religious commentary illustrating Foreman’s ability to craft a catchy tune while singing of social substance.  “Let there be a flood of justice,” he sings, “An endless procession of righteous living.”  It seems the more general Foreman’s lyrics, the better they serve the listener.

  This lyrical generality is prevalent on Foreman’s best efforts, the self-introspective “A Mirror Is Harder to Hold,” and his prayer of reinvigoration, “Resurrect Me.”  The latter, a testament to willingness and curiosity, features a twang-filled slide guitar at a zealous heart-thumping pace and is by far the most cohesive and radio-friendly song on the record.

  Branching out from the reach of his Switchfoot roots may lead to both his artistic detriment and commercial success.  With Summer EP peaking at #9 on iTunes’ top albums chart, and then falling entirely out of the top 100, it is clear that the 31-year-old Foreman has a concise dedicated following.  Whether he can translate this following into a broader appeal accompanied with respected as a singer/songwriter remains to be seen.  While one has to group his four EPs as a single effort, hopefully Foreman will realize his successes and failures and allow himself to succeed on a full length album.  With a better sense of his shortcomings and triumphs, Foreman could have very well taken the 24 songs from the four EPs and whittled them down into a high quality 14-track record.

  The album’s only hindrance to racing up the charts is its religious identity.  Being labeled a Christian rock group pigeonholed Switchfoot, much to Foreman’s dismay.  He has previously commented on this classification by saying, "Calling us Christian rock tends to be a box that closes some people out and excludes them, and that's not what we're trying to do. Music has always opened my mind and that's what we want."  If his future efforts contain more songs from the ilk of “Resurrect Me,” and fewer slow meandering ballads, Foreman’s artistic pop sensibilities should have no problem transcending genres.  Whether he is playing acoustic or electric, Foreman knows how to rock, but not yet how to whisper.