If you love rock and roll music, and don’t mind Christian undertones (this is not your overtly Christian album, in case saying Jesus 5 or more times is a criteria for your album purchasing rules) then this album is definitely a contender. I secretly bought the album about a week ago on iTunes, and then got it as a present in the CD form yesterday. I’ve listened to it about 8 times now and can confidently say that this is still Switchfoot, and that they’ve grown some musically. One thing that strikes me about this album is that each new album that Jon Foreman (frontman and one of the guitar players) writes has more emotional passion in it. I can’t think of another lyricist that has grabbed me from album one and held me close to his emotions like Jon. There is great guitar work here but you can tell that the band has been touring hard and learned about playing emotionally edgy, passionate rock and roll.

The song “Stars” is surely one of the songs that will get stuck in your heads, but I like every song on the disc with the exception of the last ‘bonus’ track (this is the Target special edition CD) “Good Night Punk.” Good Night Punk is definitely a demo song and it doesn’t fit the album’s style at all. Happy is a Yuppie word is where the album’s title comes from, its a powerful song about where your priorities and values come from. If you’re looking for happiness in stuff, cultural exceptance or any other place besides God, then you’re looking in the wrong place. “Politicians” is about… politicians and how we may have patriotic notions for our nation but that doesn’t mean that we blindly follow our political leaders or that by not supporting some of them we are not being anti-patriotic. Some politicains are scummy 🙂 All the songs are at least ‘good’ but the ones I pointed out should get (or not get) attention because they’re strong and will most likely get radio airplay.

The CD has Digital Right Management (DRM) software built into it so that on Windows you have to do a dance to get the songs into MP3 format, but on the Mac (yeah Apple!) you just insert the disc and tell it to rip the MP3s. Ironically the bass player and background vocalist, Tim Foreman (brother of Jon), posted on the Sony forums how to get around the DRM stuff on Windows 🙂 This disc is worth owning if you are wondering if DRM should be an issue.

I am not comfortable ranking this album among the other Switchfoot albums yet because frankly, they grow on me as I discover little nuances, harmonies and variation in instrumentation in their albums. Jon is creatively genious and every time I see Switchfoot (3 times so far) I’m impressed by their performance – I’m glad they came around for fifths 🙂

Also, the DRM has been handled by Sony. You’ll need to go to Sony’s site and request a replacement.