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For the enthralled audience watching as Switchfoot lights up Center Stage in downtown Atlanta on a chilly Tuesday night, it is apparent from the first song that the rock band carries a strong message in their sincere lyrics and crispy guitar riffs.
“The world begins with newborn skin,” croons lead singer Jon Foreman at the opening of the show with “Needle and Haystack Life,” a cut off of their newest album Hello, Hurricane. “We are right now.”
That sentiment of change in the world and the ability humanity has to make a difference, right now, is echoed throughout the 22-song set. While Switchfoot has always been a high-energy rock and roll band, once dominating the airwaves with their 2004 smash single “Meant to Live,” these five musicians from San Diego have also used music as a means of sending a strong message of faith, love, and activism to the world. This comes to the forefront of the band’s purpose with the seventh studio album Hello, Hurricane, which manages to blend a stylistic experimentation with their rock sound and a contrastingly delicate message of hope.
“This is the sound of a heartbeat,” Foreman screams into his microphone, standing in front of a burst of yellow light as the mass of fans at the foot of the stage thrust their fists into the air to “The Sound.” The song, also from the new LP, is a thunderous, bass-heavy track that fans of their energetic side will enjoy, along with the greater half of the album.
Similarly, the equally fist-pumping “Bullet Soul” is a daredevil of a song with an attitude-tinged guitar riff and an infectious hook, boasting the verse, “Are you ready to go?” The band’s harder material shifts from defiant to downright angry when bassist Tim Foreman and guitarist Drew Shirley shine in the performance of “Free.” Echoing the lyrics of their biggest hit “Meant to Live,” the angst-ridden number expresses the need to be freed of the world’s chains as Foreman sings “Inside this shell is a prison cell.”
With a fine tuned sense of musical versatility, Switchfoot balances the fast-paced rock anthems with a less familiar ambient sound in a handful of songs on the album. After a series of uninterrupted up-tempo performances, Foreman brings down the lights and begins to interact with the audience, connecting the fans to the deeper material on the record.
Preceding the performance of the ballad “Always,” the usually bouncy Foreman, who at one point bangs the drums like a wild man with percussionist Chad Butler, sits calmly at the piano under a single spotlight and discusses the meaning behind the slow but powerful song. “It’s the story of birth, followed by [the feelings of] cynicism that come with setbacks in life,” the lead singer tells the audience in a somber moment of silence. “And, finally, there’s that realization of hope.”
The uncharacteristically slower Switchfoot songs show an experimental side of the band, combining elements of electronic and acoustic sounds. The best example of this on Hello, Hurricane is heard on the melancholy “Yet,” which Foreman tells the audience is his favorite song to play live. With keyboardist Jerome Fontamillas on the “keytar,” the singer’s tortured voice sways with the tranquil sound of the music, crying that “if it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love.”
While much of the lyrics on the new album reflect a theme of redemption and change in the modern world, the band proves just how serious they are about their message by incorporating their activism in the structure of the tour. In between songs, Foreman reminds the fans to participate in the canned food drive being hosted in the string of cities being visited. Each show and each city has its own food drive for donations to local food banks, with proceeds from the Atlanta drive benefiting the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
As the band reiterated to the crowd, “Hope is believing in a world that does not exist yet.”
Though the members of Switchfoot are self-proclaimed Christians, their live show is not quite an alternative church service. It is instead a beautiful dichotomy of an electrifying rock spectacle and a musical source of inspiration for a questioning generation. As the band has the entire crowd sing along to the fan favorite “Dare You to Move” and Foreman leaps into the crowd to be embraced by screaming admirers, the concert wholly speaks volumes about Switchfoot’s ability to connect with the fans and leave a lasting impact on each of their lives through the music, in hopes that they someday will bring upon that desired change in the world.
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