Faithful Obedience Without Pragmatism: The Music of John Van Deusen

Sincerity. Authenticity. Earnestness. Any true fan would readily ascribe these things to their favorite artists. Even ironic or nihilistic art should be created with genuine purpose and interest, else there is no reason for it to be consumed or regarded. AI Spotify might set the mood in soulless coffee shops, but these will not inspire devotion or fanaticism.

It is far more fraught to try to label any human-generated art as lacking these characteristics. Those with greater knowledge and more refined sensibilities could go on in detail on why Top 40 pop hits are all counterfeits of each other, lacking in any musical originality or true artistry. You may not hear this as often as you should because professional critics are financially incentivized to comment with excitement on the most popular, lowest common denominator. And you will continue to have a flood of such music due to bands with complementary motivations.

Those critics like me who are inclined to speak to the lyrical, literary, and spiritual content of our preferred albums might readily address the vacuous and vapid music that commands airwaves and online feeds with uncompromising vigor. The lyrics are like on-package marketing that ensures loyal customers the product is “up to 100% effective.”  It may sometimes only be 20% effective… Today’s top hits are often unfortunately close to that mark, with just enough emotional content to engage the masses. The music may warrant up to 100% engagement, but likely far less.

Still, if any art truly and deeply resonates with its audience, who am I to argue?  As I said, calling anyone’s art insincere, inauthentic, or unearnest is fraught.

Fully aware of these difficulties, I will heartily defend the statement that John Van Deusen’s new album As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise Pt. 1 is a unique, valuable, and tremendously earnest work of worship, one that stands out starkly from its peers. More caveats and addendums will follow in this review, but the claim will not be rescinded.

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JVD introduces his own album in a short essay on Bandcamp, which I have edited/condensed below:

…If I am brutally honest, I don’t listen to “worship” music as a genre. I just don’t know how to connect with it. I’m not here to critique it but I have to confess that part of the reason I put my hand to the plow and wrote this album is because I selfishly wanted to make worship music that I would want to listen to…

All I did was make the music I wanted to listen to. I made it loud. I made it dorky. My only metric of success was whether or not I was having fun and whether or not my heart was entering into worship. I kid you not, making these songs was the most blissful experience of my life… but as I listen to them now I often break down in tired tears…

Also, when I started this album I had this strange voice somewhere inside of me telling me I needed to make this “thing” before I died. I’m not being hyperbolic. I actually felt like I was on a creative mission. Whether this paints me a lunatic or a mystic or both, I’m unsure. However, this is where the title of this album came from. There are days where all I can think about is how I want to be… home. I want to be at peace. I want to see Jesus face to face. And then the Spirit speaks and says, “Don’t worry. It won’t be long. In the meantime I would like you to make some noise.”...

I felt joy and depression at the same time and did my absolute best to make an album that I’d actually listen to. I turned to my friends for help. And the whole thing is me borrowing from my heroes (XTC, The Microphones, Peter Gabriel, Weezer, Nick Drake, Judee Sill, Death Cab For Cutie, Sonic Youth, REM, Smashing Pumpkins, Sufjan Stevens, The Lemonheads, The Beach Boys, Keith Green, Karl Blau, The Newsboys, Switchfoot, The Beatles, etc) and filtering my ideas and prayers through some kind of stained-glass indie-rock, fuzz-pop DIY folk aesthetic…

Born out of an inner pull to just finally die; a feeling that teeters between heavenly ache and depressed fight or flight. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a landmark work. Maybe it will be forgotten about. But it doesn’t matter in the end because I’ve done the very best I could and I’ve surrendered it to my Maker. I feel a sense of joy surging from Him as He looks at me. I get the impression He likes it even though it’s not the best He’s heard. And honestly, that’s all I could ever ask for.

All this from a worship leader.

I wrote a book after I recovered from a brain bleed with the same sense of calling and urgency that Van Deusen describes here. I know what he means: the sense that the work must be completed before our time on earth comes to an end. One does not sit down to such work worrying about its popular success or hoping for sales commensurate with the toil. Of course any human may have such things in the back of his mind, as a distant hope; but if we take JVD at his word, this dual-release album behemoth, this magnus opus landmark work was not written, recorded, and produced with the goal of seeing John become a full-time professional musician. Instead we see a worship leader faithfully steward his gifts and calling, with hope that the songs he releases to the wider world will be a blessing to his listeners and a worthy sacrifice to his Creator.

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If you sat down with the lyrics of Joyful Noise without ever hearing Van Deusen’s uniquely noisy orchestration and pitchy voice, I’m not sure if any of the words would really jump out at you. A majority of the songs could be scribbled on a journal page of just about any CCM artist. And honestly, that should not come as a surprise.

Joyful Noise is after all a worship album. And a Christian worship album will almost certainly draw most of its imagery, tropes, and wording from scripture. This is a well trod path. A highway, really. An excess of creativity is not necessary to recraft a few verses and to make sure that the rhythm and rhyme are reasonably good. In a sense, worship should be able to write itself.

So how can anyone claim that a musician has done something truly and extraordinarily creative when they use scripture as the backbone of their words? How can such a lyricist avoid falling into tired churchy truisms?

In one sense, it’s probably not possible. The lyrics themselves, if faithful to scripture (and John’s are), will use many of the same words and phrases that you always see in worship music, much of which have been used as hamfisted, cliched platitudes many times before. Still, there are creative ways to invert or interpret biblical stories into clever metaphors that apply to our personal, internal lives. We see this in ‘The Red Sea Within Me.’  As one of Joyful Noise’s more straightforward songs, lyrically and musically, this song is easily approachable. It features humble recognition of human insufficiency and God’s history of salvation. It is a faithful and easy song for Christians to sing along to.

So too is the album’s first track, ‘I Was Made To Praise.’ There is an innocent fancy that characterizes the song that would easily find itself in an elementary Sunday School class. Perhaps the melody is not quite as easy as one would find preschoolers singing along to, but it still fits the general description.

Even the following song, ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ has nothing revelatory in the lyrics. I defy my reader to find a song candidly worshipping Jesus that rocks more, and yet the lyrics are still pretty straightforward. You could call them banal, prosaic, or simply overplayed, and I could not argue. We would have just as much reason to roll our eyes at one more song using the same old formula if it was written by Phil Wickham, Elevation Worship, Crowder, Jeremy Camp, or Lauren Daigle. The third track, ‘Hallelujah Story,’ is basically more of the same as far as lyrics go.

So where does John Van Deusen’s earnest and authentic sincerity stand apart from his more successful peers if I have already called his album’s first four tracks less than novel?

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First of all, I do not question the sincerity of the faith of those musicians listed immediately above. I echo JVD’s appreciation for artists writing contemporary worship for today’s church. Nor do I wish to pooh-pooh the musical tastes of those who jam along to K-Love in their cars. That said, the combination of John Van Desusen’s musical artistry and lyrical sincerity far outstrips the formulaic hits that stay at the top of the charts.

Before JVD was JVD, he fronted The Lonely Forest. In 2011, NPR named The Lonely Forest as one of the best new artists, alongside James Blake and The Weeknd. But the band released its final album 2 years later. John stepped away from a budding musical career and a trending band because of an encounter with faith, a love for his wife, and a recognition of his personal failures (if you’ve got about 5 minutes, you can hear him describe this time in his life). When he returned to music, he decided to release music under his own name and began a series of four albums, (I Am) Origami.

On release of Pt. 1, John was invited to play on KEXP’s Seattle airwaves based on his PNW indie-rock bona fides. To my knowledge, he has not been invited back, and it is possible Pt. 2 influenced that. Van Deusen recognizes in his essay that accompanies his recent album, just as Noah Gundersen has said himself at KEXP, that religion is noxious to the popular culture of the Pacific Northwest. JVD committed the unforgivable and released a full-throated worship album as the second installment of the (I Am) Origami series.

Chances are that you have not heard of (I Am) Origami Pt. 2 - Every Power Wide Awake, but TGC listed it as one of the Best Christian Albums of the 2010s. It is an extraordinary piece of art, without further qualification. It is one of the most unique and boisterous worship albums you will ever listen to. Do yourself a favor and give it a once-over.

Just as quickly as it may have appeared that John Van Deusen had catapulted himself out of The Lonely Forest into a promising solo career, he scuttled all hopes of finding a popular audience on his home turf of Seattle and the broader PNW. He threw away his solid indie reputation by releasing a worship album. With Every Power Wide Awake, one would think that he had set a new trajectory and that he would henceforth lean however far he may into the world of CCM, K-Love, and the Dove Awards.

But in his art, JVD consistently refuses to submit to any molds and seems ever prepared to surprise. Instead of attempting to get a Christian Bookstore stamp of approval, he sang on Pt. 1 “Have you thought about the waves?  Have you considered getting high to watch the ocean and the shore make love?” That’ll unsettle the nerves of any youth pastor looking to keep his job. On Pt. 3, John sings rather unapologetically about suicide. Yet he mixes the weight of his unbearable emotions with indomitable faith. The spiritual discomfort maxes out in ‘If All Is Nothing / Nothing Must End:’

I long to be
I long to be undividedly yours
Undividedly yours

What difference would it make if I could hear
If I could see you?
What difference would it make?

I ponder snuffing out the candle that you lit within me
To force the angel’s hand

Because I long to be
I long to be undividedly yours
Undividedly yours

I’m searching for the grace
And for the peace I need to follow through
To face another day

But my fingers they are bloody
As I mine amidst the hopelessness
And I wonder, “Should I stay”?

(I Am) Origami Pt. 4 - Marathon Daze does not clear up this confused mess. To my ears, it is JVD’s densest album, and it wavers between despair, love, indifference, and unquestioning faith. The album wraps up with a couple of identifiably “Christian” songs. ‘God Outside of Time’ is the penultimate, and the lyrics read as simply as those first four tracks on Joyful Noise:

I am held in Your mercy
You tenderly speak my name
I am safe in Your future
You go before and make a way
I am called to be holy
You share with me Your victory
I am loved everlasting
Your care for me will never cease

I will trust Your providential love
I will rest in Your never changing ways

Name above all name
Jesus King of Kings
Spirit breath of life
Creator of each thing

My God outside of time

Read the lyrics. Consider how commonplace this song is. Quaint almost, in its scriptural guilelessness.

Now listen to the track.

JVD is once again shooting himself in the foot. What radio station is going to play such a cacophonous song? At best, a college broadcast with nominal listenership? Any Christian stations? I think not. What is the market? Who is his audience?

The last album Van Deusen released before Joyful Noise was Anthem Sprinter, released by Tooth & Nail Records. This album is full of previously unreleased, self-aware songs that John wrote when he was living recklessly, damaging himself and others. There is not a whole lot of spirituality in this one… But oh man does it rock!  ‘Comeback Wrecker’ and ‘Trebuchet’ can hang with some of the best bangers from other Tooth & Nail bands: consider P.O.D.’s ‘Boom,’ Anberlin’s ‘Feel Good Drag,’ or MxPx’s ‘Under Lock and Key.’

As much as a small, particular portion of his audience may enjoy this rocking turn, it certainly seems like Van Deusen is purposefully keeping any potential fanbase on its heels as he keeps pivoting and running in different directions. I recognize that Every Power Wide Awake is not an album for everyone. But if a Christian listener worked through the sonic surprises, she may find that she really does enjoy John’s approach to worshipping God. If the next album she listens to is Marathon Daze, I am not sure she will come back for more.

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It is clear to me that John Van Deusen makes music as an expression of his whole self. I am not convinced he has his listenership in mind as he writes lyrics and composes his tracks. His target audience is God. He is writing music as a lover of music, for himself, as self-expression of his faith. You could say he does so neurotically, pathologically, to his own detriment. Perhaps so. But for lack of a better explanation for his oeuvre, I would call JVD’s worship faithful obedience.

Marshall McLuhan famously revealed to the world that “the medium is the message.”  Just because you have heard this phrase countless times does not mean that it has been robbed of its meaning. Let it absorb into your judgments as we think about what JVD has been doing for about a decade.

By all appearances, John Van Deusen is a convinced and committed Christian, serving his local church as a worship leader (probably singing pretty normal worship on any given Sunday) and serving the wider church with incredibly unique worship compositions. And yet, in his albums published to date, he flatly refuses to submit to any conventional Christian mold. His medium is music that blithely criss-crosses boundaries between genres and markets, eschewing the expectations of industry and audience alike.

While his first worship album Every Power Wide Awake is about as noisy as Joyful Noise, the earlier album is based primarily in larger-than-life acoustic and orchestral sounds, something you may expect to hear in a formal theater. Joyful Noise on the other hand is anchored to pop melodies, grunge feedback, and electric elements that you would expect in any given indie concert venue. ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ belongs in a crowd of head-bangers. ‘Let Me Rest My Head’ belongs on a Weezer album. ‘I’m Coming Back to the Heart of Worship’ is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Matt Redman’s iconic critique of overly-produced church services, and the grungey instrumental leads into the spacey feedback and bird calls of ‘Self-Aware, Ready to Die.’

The album is self-consciously unique and ever so slightly transgressive. But JVD’s genre-defying catalogue, his self-critical lyrics, his willingness to invite Jesus onto otherwise secular albums, even his endearingly imperfect singing voice: these all contribute to his ability to step into worship without a drop of irony. Sincerity is native to the medium of his particular art. What might sound bromide coming from any given Christian™ band, what should sound sarcastic coming from a musician who shies aware from such branding, instead shines through for its utter sincerity.

‘By Gracious Powers’ might as well have been written by John Newton or Horatio Spafford, and it is also a song just as worthy of being in your church’s hymnal. ‘Answer Me,’ ‘Close Enough,’ and ‘Let Me Rest My Head’ were written by a man as broken and as faithful as Rich Mullins. ‘Knowing’ was written with a desperate confidence that, “All matter is moving for [God]. All laws are bound by [God’s] name. All wisdom is pointing toward [God].”  

There are many hard-won truths and shattered hopes littered throughout JVD’s artistry; these come to a head and characterize Joyful Noise. There is obvious personal cost associated with Van Deusen’s albums, a delicate willingness to expose vulnerability. If he is trying to commodify his hurt and sell it like some sad sop on Top 40, he is not doing it very well. Even a novice talent manager would be able to tell John to knock it off, choose a creative direction, and stick to it. There are obvious ways to pursue success in the industry, and JVD seems to be taking all the wrong paths on purpose.

The best explanation for the creative and spiritual road that John Van Deusen has taken is that he is earnestly trying to steward his musical gifts and personal history to serve God as only John Van Deusen can. In order to do so genuinely, he would have to speak honestly about his experience, much of which is not explicitly religious. His view of religion is just as likely to be full of tension and frustration as joy and worship. The music, and how it is presented to the audience, would have to address the weariness that accompanied its creation. Sincerity would recognize that joy is actually really hard for John.

So what has John Van Deusen given us?  How is this album uniquely earnest in the Christian music space?

For John, life is a heavy weight. The expectations of the world can be far too much. When his friends and family try to encourage him to improve, he responds by saying, “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.” Sometimes he just wants to “fly away to hell.” There are moments when John wants to do God’s will, but God just won’t pick up the phone to tell him what that is. Life is heavy. But JVD is called to carry it nonetheless.

It is in moments like this that making a joyful noise can be nothing but faithful obedience. Nothing else would lead to worship. Until he is called home, until his nomad existence ends and he leaves his tent on the foreign soil of this life, until he arrives in his heavenly mansion, JVD has committed to glorifying God. That means making a joyful noise even when it is the least natural thing to do.

And still, life is full of blessings. Worship can be bliss. God is good. In response, we are called to live faithfully. What that looks like is particular to the person.

On ‘Anything Other Than What I Am Right Now,’ JVD shows what that looks like for him:

I don't have to write this song, I don't have to prove You right
Your love does the heavy lifting
I don't need to start a fire or play religion's games
I can trust the process of living in Your name

I don't need to lose myself in a sea of risen hands
Your love is sittin' with me when I don't want to stand
I don't have to choose a side or always share my mind
Your truth doesn't depend on my opinion

Oh so good, oh so good
I don't gotta be anything other than what I am right now
Oh so good, oh so good
I don't gotta be anything other than what I am right now

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It's not that I'm forgetting the call to grow and change
But I can't earn His love and that's what sweeps me away

John Van Deusen is just going to keep being himself, relishing God’s unconditional love while pursuing sanctification in his particular (very particular) way. He will not present anything other than what he is in the moment, as much as that may contradict popular wisdom or the expectations of his listeners. Here’s hoping he keeps inviting us all along for the ride because seeing his genuine witness to God’s work in his life (packaged in his wonderfully unique music) is an incredible blessing for my soul. I pray it is for you too.