Amy Grant

Item: Behind The Eyes
Author: Vanessa Crooks / Janis Flint-Ferguson

Behind The Eyes

(1997)

Reviewed by Vanessa Crooks / Janis Flint-Ferguson

Discogs Apple Music TIDAL Spotify YouTube Music

Label MyrrhThe LighthouseNovember 1997

adult contemporary folk rock pop

Amy Grant's latest release, Behind The Eyes, is a distinct departure from the buoyant, glossy snapshots that have been her signature. Culled from a self-confessed season of soul searching, this project exhibits a new level of honesty and a deepened awareness of the brokenness of our human condition. From the opening track, "Nobody Home," where everything is "broken up" or "broken down," Grant charts raw, almost painfully vulnerable, territory. Though the music and vocals are more relaxed, more natural than ever before, the view from Behind The Eyes is not pretty. This is not a collection of Kodak moments, but rather a documentary of reality.

The album's premise, which courses its way through diverse settings, is that things are not as they seem. In "Takes A Little Time," we are reminded that there is no such thing as a "quick fix" to life's problems. In the haunting "Cry A River," the picture is of a woman regretting her lost love, yet the words beseech him to sit alone and cry for her as well. This theme is more obviously expressed in "The Feeling I Had," with its particularly forceful observation that "words are cheap and seldom true."

Nevertheless, Behind The Eyes is not devoid of hope. The edgy, rhapsodic anthem, "Turn This World Around," is one of a few hopeful tracks. In it, Grant testifies that we are all the same "behind the eyes," with "broken promises and dreams in good disguise." However, by the time the chorus comes around, she is biting down on the words, as if to hold back a more passionate outburst, and encouragingly challenging us that "it's really not that far to where hope can be found." For those who criticize the "loss" of Christianity in Grant's work, this album may be another example of her "lost faith," but for others of us, it is an admonition that we can't make it on our own. Because of what is "behind the eyes," we have a common need for God, a God who is not far from us at all.

The most overtly spiritual cut, "Somewhere Down The Road," ends the album. It is a powerful reminder that though we do not understand now, God waits for us at the end of our journey. While the allusions are subtle, the meaning is clear and Christian: we will not, indeed cannot, understand the many complexities of this life, but there are mighty arms "reaching out for you, and they will hold the answers at the end of the road." Despite the bleakness of humanity, there is no doubt about God's constancy and faithfulness and love.

Producers Wayne Kirkpatrick and Keith Thomas wrap the guitars and keyboards in sparse layers around Grant's distinctively reedy and harmonic voice, creating a paradoxical mixture of resilience and fragility (reinforcing the very paradox of the album's contents). Indeed, throughout the brooding, minimalist atmosphere of this recording, it is Grant's voice that resonates. An eminent variety of musicians, including long-standing collaborators Jerry McPherson, Dann Huff, and Chris McHugh, as well as Nashville notables Kenny Greenberg, Phil Madeira, and Christine Denté (Out of the Grey), add fillips of texture to the mix. The resultant tone is spare, but warm.

Drawing on the folk-oriented, confessional, soft-rock style that dominated American pop in the 1970's (think Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell), Grant proves that the intimacy of this approach is still appealing twenty years later. With echoes of "Big Yellow Taxi" reverberating in "Takes A Little Time," Grant and her production team ground her music in a way that, while it hints at another era, is not old-fashioned. Instead, what comes across is a feel that is both classy and contemporary-an image of the lady herself.

Behind The Eyes appears as a look behind the pedestal-if not an outright step off the pedestal-of a musical icon. In personalizing her search, Grant shows us life as it is, not as we want it to be. Life is harsh; it is complex; it is difficult to understand; it is real. The result is an evolution in Christian pop music not unlike the evolution in folk when Bob Dylan first bared his soul. The result then and now is that we, the listeners, are led to examine our own attitudes, our own hope, and our own faith as we struggle to make it real. One might even surmise that Grant's current musical shift reveals a decision that the best witness for Christ at this stage is her own life with all its twists and turns. Thank God for artists like Amy Grant, who are willing to share even their most unpolished, interior views-holding up the mirror which reflects what lies "behind the eyes" and in our own souls.