Songs of Exile

There is music being made these days that speaks to wintery Christian themes—Eve Tushnet, on our blog, recommended Harrison Lemke’s Fertile Crescent Blues as “a smoke break from the endless Christian pep rally, a lay-me-down instead of yet another pick-me-up.” But there is also a wealth of melancholy music in the pre-acoustic-guitar Christian tradition. A favorite hymn of mine is “O God Our Help In Ages Past” by Isaac Watts and William Croft. This famous tune expresses both an enduring hope in God and an awareness of the terrifying contingency of man in the face of time’s advance.