A grown-up Martin Smith still can groove on latest album

Martin Smith, former lead singer for the Christian rock band Delirious?, stood entranced by a massive forest fire in the mountains of Greece. He was there on a family vacation, according to an interview with NewMusicTuesday.com. Seeing the fire, he told his kids, “When we wake up, that fire will still be going—just keep burning through the night … it’s amazing to think that fire never sleeps.” Smith saw the raging fire as a powerful image of the Holy Spirit’s work in the believer’s life.

Such was the spark for “Fire Never Sleeps,” an upbeat single from Smith’s latest solo effort. With punchy drums and drizzling lead guitars, the track bears an uncanny resemblance to U2, made all the stronger by Smith’s Bono-esque vocals as he describes the Holy Spirit’s purifying power: “I feel the heat is rising / the flames on the horizon / are at my door … the embers of our brokenness / are scattered on the floor / This fire never sleeps / His fire never sleeps.”

Smith’s new album is called Back To The Start. And true to its title, Smith brings a strong “back to basics” sensibility both musically and lyrically. Many of the arrangements are surprisingly stripped down with an almost confessional quality. The opening title track sets the tone with a simple, warm keyboard while Smith mulls over his need for a return to form in his faith: “Back to the start / Where you found me / I give you my heart again.”

There are other simple pleasures such as “Awake My Soul,” a loose-limbed ditty reminiscent of “Happy Song” from Smith’s earlier days. Here, a bouncy beat joins an acoustic guitar as Smith exhorts his own soul to remember God’s faithfulness. Smith’s rhythmic delivery creates a funky texture as he acknowledges, “I lost heart / lost soul / lost rhythm in my bones / got to find my God again / I was dead, I was gone, and I thought I was done / You were there in the hurricane.”

Smith achieves real beauty in the melancholy “Song of Solomon.” Gentle piano playing mingles with the spare beauty of Smith’s voice as he laments, “When I feel the cold of winter / and this cloak of sadness / I need you / All the evil things that shake me / all the words that break me / I need you.” Listeners may get shivers of delight as Smith’s voice arcs upward to match the greater vantage point where he sees God running over mountains and seas to provide care and comfort.

Although Smith takes time to breathe in Back To The Start, fans of his earlier work need not fret. The album also contains its fair share of anthem-style groove-pop that is Smith’s trademark. But there’s more quietness and deliberation appropriate to a man in his 40s rather than his 20s. That being said, even with maturing years there are still reasons to party, and Smith enumerates them in “God’s Great Dance Floor.” A club beat thumps steadily while horns blast and swing as Smith celebrates, “You never stop loving us / No matter how far we run / You’ll never give up on us … I feel alive / I come alive / I am alive on God’s great dance floor.” Even on this more reflective album, Smith reminds us that the believer’s joy is not a quietly contained intellectualism. Spiritual jubilation ought sometimes to involve the whole man, much like King David who “danced before the Lord with all his might.”