Perhaps best known for penning the anthem “How He Loves,” John Mark McMillan is hailed for his concise, poetic and often “raw” lyrics.
“Raise your voice, chase away the ghosts.” So begins the title track from Economy. A natural progression and a departure, McMillan’s latest album has moved away from the themes of death and resurrection that clothed The Medicine to the interior psychology of a man trying to live in the uneasy valley between this world and the next.
“For me, the greatest days—the birth of a child, the success of a career—have always been coupled with the worst ones—the death of a loved one, a friend’s divorce,” McMillan explains. “It’s a tension we all live in.”
On Economy, that tension is electric. From the first drumbeat of album opener “Sheet of Night” to the post-rock cacophony that closes out “Seen a Darkness,” there is a palpable weight that permeates the entire project. Economy is the sound of glory and shame, murder and grace, darkness and daylight and all those spaces in between. And it shows up in the songs—in the delicate beauty of “Love You Swore,” in the rowdy drawl of “Daylight,” and the quiet solemnity of “Murdered Son.”
For those following the North Carolina-based songwriter’s steady rise as an artist, Economy will not disappoint. Lyrically and sonically, the album is far greater than the sum of its parts, served by McMillan’s band and producers Jeremy Griffith and Joel Khouri. The team has created a perfect accompaniment to McMillan’s searching, searing vision of a world that is “not as it should be.” But it’s not just a broken world that McMillan is singing about. With Economy, he’s pointing across the horizon to the hope of something much more than “broken hearts and counterfeit currency.”
McMillan has been touring the U.S. with the David Crowder Band including sold-out dates in New York, Seattle, Dallas, San Diego and Chicago. Tonight (Nov. 1), he performs at another sold-out concert in his hometown of Charlotte before heading to Atlanta on Nov. 5 and Orlando on Nov 11. In spring, he launches a 30-plus city Ruckus tour. Additional information, including tour updates, can be found at http://thejohnmark.com, https://www.facebook.com/TheRuckusRoom, and http://www.paradigmmgmt.com/stories/john-mark-mcmillan.
