Artist Review: The Gray Havens

I've noticed there aren't a lot of articles about Catholic rock musicians, and that's because there appear to be very few. This is not an article about Catholic rock musicians, but like the author who inspires much of their music, they leave you wondering what's holding them back from embracing the faith since it appears to be coming out their pores.

The band I'm writing about is The Gray Havens.  The author that inspires their work is C.S. Lewis.  They’re not just a band that anthologizes the characters in the Narnia, like Sarah Sparks’ “Into the Lantern Wastes”, or a band whose music is incredibly tangential to the source material, like Styx’s “Lords of the Rings” or Iron Maiden’s “Out of the Silent Planet”.  They’re clearly steeped in the philosophy and theology of Lewis.  Narnian references abound in songs like “Music from a Garden” and “Tread the Dawn”, but also subtle references to Lewis’ biography in “It’s possible” (which is a bop if I’ve ever heard one) but, according to lead singer David Radford on his Blue Flower podcast, is actually about Lewis’s first experiences coming to Oxford, where he was let down by his expectations, only to discover that he had it’s possible he had seen the city from the wrong side.

Their first album Fire and Stone starts with a rousing recap of the Kerygma.  It follows either Jesus or Aslan’s crucifixions, deaths and resurrections; it’s never quite clear whether the subject of the songs is the real Christ or the allegorical Lion and it doesn’t particularly matter. The b-side of the album follows the response of faith; what we do with Grace and how we deal with sin.

The second and third albums, Ghost of a King and She Waits are seem to be about Lewis’ writing about the various characters in The Great Divorce; death; a lot of the end of the world; and the second coming.  Purgatorial vibes aside, they have one song which ought to have been picked up by secular radio, called “Band of Gold”, which is a lovely expression of love between husbands and wives. I’ll be sneaking that into the set list at my children’s weddings! And even throughout the expressions of hope that would otherwise seem dismal, as it is with Lewis, whenever someone good in his books dies, you always get a concrete sense that they’re better for it. You feel hope itself.

The latest album, Blue Flower is the most subtle and veiled of all their Lewisian themes.  One needs to listen to their podcast to crack the nuts of some of the songs, and even the name Blue Flower, refers to something out of the Lewis brothers’ youth. But, musically, the songs just keep improving and my esteem for their great musicality keeps going further on and further up with each release.

The Gray Havens have four studio albums and two E.P.s and numerous other tracks, including instrumental versions of their works available on Spotify and at grayhavensmusic.com. They’re currently on tour in the Midwest, so check ‘em out if you get the chance.