Crashings — Falling Up

Crashings is the debut album by Falling Up, a rock band from Albany, Oregon, fronted by singer and main songwriter Jessy Ribordy. BEC Recordings released it on February 24, 2004. It runs twelve songs in a little under thirty-nine minutes, and it mixes hard rock guitars, rap verses, electronic touches and choruses you could almost sing in church. It isn't the most original record of its year, and its critics said so at the time. But it's one of the most likeable Christian rock debuts of the era, and it had a bigger first week than anything the label had put out before.

Where it came from

Falling Up grew up alongside Kutless, the Albany band whose debut Sea of Faces had already made it big on BEC. According to cMusicWeb, Ribordy and guitarist Tom Cox started the group in their first year of high school, spent years touring with their friends in Kutless, and got signed in mid-2003 after Kutless handed a Falling Up demo to label owner Brandon Ebel.

The early lineup was a six-piece. AllMusic lists Ribordy, Cox and Joseph Kisselburgh on guitars, Jeremy Miller on bass, Josh Shroy on drums and a full-time DJ and programmer, which goes a long way to explaining why this album sounds busier than most hard rock records of 2004. Aaron Sprinkle, the solo artist and former Poor Old Lu member, produced it, and AllMusic lists Compound Studios in Seattle as where it was recorded.

What it sounds like

The opener, "Bittersweet," sets the template. cMusicWeb's Bert Gangl said it falls "somewhere between the plaintive emo rock of Brandtson and the groove-intensive alt-metal of Linkin Park," and that's about right. Tight, chopping guitars sit under Ribordy's clear, slightly breathy voice, and the chorus opens up wide.

Jesus Freak Hideout reviewer Josh Taylor heard Linkin Park all over the album, calling that influence "fairly obvious on nearly every track." He wasn't wrong. But the band moves around enough that it never settles into one copy. "Escalates" is lighter and poppier, and Gangl compared it to the "pop-tinged post-grunge" of Tonic and Third Eye Blind. "New Hope" and "Jackson 5" go into rap and reggae. "The Gathering" is the big arena anthem, the kind of song Gangl said made it hard to imagine their shows as "anything but utterly rousing affairs."

"Broken Heart," the first radio single, is the one most people remember. It's built on a strange, lurching guitar line. Gangl said it had "the sort of chunky, slightly dissonant guitar textures that most '80s pop-metal bands would have given their last can of hair spray to own." Years later, Andrea Hardee wrote in Jesus Freak Hideout's Top 100 Tooth & Nail albums list that even this most straightforward song "has that strange but awesome guitar line that might be in the key of Z."

Then there's "Jackson 5," the oddest thing here. It brings in Jon Micah Sumrall of Kutless, Paul Wright, Ben Hubert and Ryan Clark of Demon Hunter, the same Ryan Clark whose band put out Summer of Darkness that same year. Taylor called it "bizarre, yet brilliant." It starts with raps and ends with Clark screaming, toned down a little, but still him.

What it says

Falling Up never hid what the songs were about. Taylor wrote that it was "always nice to see a rock band come along that speaks so freely of their faith, without feeling the need to water down the message." In his reading, the album's message was simple: God is always there for you, and all you have to do is reach out and embrace Him. "Bittersweet" is about letting go of the things of the world and grabbing hold of God's love.

Gangl noticed something more interesting in how the lyrics work. The verses are often cryptic, and he compared the verses of "Broken Heart" to Michael Stipe's murmuring on early R.E.M. records. Then the chorus drops all the mystery: "Father, healer, deliver me from broken love," a line he said could have come from a modern worship song. That pull between the vague and the plain runs right through the album.

How it did

The record was a hit by BEC's standards. According to the band's profile on NewReleaseToday, it sold 3,396 copies in its first week, beating the label's previous best first week, which Kutless had set. The same profile says it passed 50,000 copies by the end of 2004, and that "Broken Heart," "Escalates" and "Bittersweet" all reached No. 1 on the Christian rock charts at R&R. Both "Broken Heart" and "Escalates" got music videos.

The reviews were warmer than lukewarm, but not by much. Taylor's main complaint was originality: "If true originality is your thing, Falling Up falls flat," he wrote, "but if you're looking for a new and exciting rock act, look no further." John DiBiase, in Jesus Freak Hideout's second opinion, said Sprinkle didn't "really add anything unique or too significant" as producer, and that the band wasn't "too distinctly different" from PAX217 or Linkin Park. Gangl agreed the band "occasionally wanders into musically generic territory," and he pointed to "Falling in Love," with its "wind beneath them" line, as an example of the band's "intermittent lyrical struggles." Still, he put the album "firmly in the ought-to-own category."

The verdict

Crashings isn't Falling Up's best album. Even Hardee, who loved it, wrote that the band truly found its sound later, on Captiva and Fangs!. But it's a confident, energetic debut from a young band that clearly loved the radio rock of their day and found ways to bend it. The singles still hold up, "The Gathering" still sounds huge, and "Jackson 5" is a fun reminder of how close-knit that Christian rock scene was. The Linkin Park debt is real, a couple of songs drift, and the lyrics sometimes reach for a greeting card. It's a good record, and a few of its songs are better than that.

7/10

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