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Put your hands on the remote! browse music »The Song Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down by John Mark McMillan
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fave it Folk Rock | Americana
12 tracks | 59 minutes
Released Nov 2005
on John Mark McMillan
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- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:31 London Town lyrics FREE 03:31 London Town lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:31 London Town
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:10 Make You Move lyrics BUY MP3 05:10 Make You Move lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:10 Make You Move
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:44 Alive lyrics BUY MP3 03:44 Alive lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:44 Alive
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:49 Ashes And Flames lyrics BUY MP3 05:49 Ashes And Flames lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:49 Ashes And Flames
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:38 Breaking Down lyrics BUY MP3 04:38 Breaking Down lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:38 Breaking Down
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:25 Kiss Your Feet lyrics BUY MP3 04:25 Kiss Your Feet lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:25 Kiss Your Feet
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:29 Closer lyrics BUY MP3 05:29 Closer lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:29 Closer
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:00 Setting Suns lyrics BUY MP3 04:00 Setting Suns lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:00 Setting Suns
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:01 I Am A Temple lyrics BUY MP3 05:01 I Am A Temple lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:01 I Am A Temple
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:42 Next To You lyrics BUY MP3 04:42 Next To You lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:42 Next To You
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:02 Walking In My Sleep lyrics BUY MP3 05:02 Walking In My Sleep lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:02 Walking In My Sleep
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 07:58 How He Loves lyrics BUY MP3 07:58 How He Loves lyrics "GIFT MP3" 07:58 How He Loves
British influenced, Springsteen infused, Southern by association, experimental homegrown rock with spiritual overtones, and savory verse
Bio / Background
"This album deals with what happens when you fall apart"
-John Mark McMillan
You get the sense, when listening to an album by John Mark McMillan, that there is another America out there. It's an America more real than the one you're used to: the one of endless car dealerships, sprawled out suburbia, and shoeshine religion. This is not that America. This is the America that exists, breathing and living, outside the realm of blue state and red state allegiance. This is the America built on the backs of the bruised and the broken, the America of under-produced country music and fuzzed out rock and roll and old time gospel.
Though McMillan's most recent release, The Song inside the Sounds of the Breaking Down, may open up with the deceptively Anglo-centric "London town", the sound was most definitely born in the U.S.A.
↓ more ↓From the banjos and tube crunch of "Breaking Down" to the careening, slightly drunken "Next to You Now", McMillan and company have crafted an album that sonically stretches from sea to shining sea, subtly pulling from influences as disparate as Springsteen, Whiskeytown, and Death Cab for Cutie.
Lyrically, John Mark McMillan thinks like a poet. Lines like "I've been walking in my sleep/digging trenches in the pavement with the soles of my feet" and "I dreamed I kissed your feet/between the cigarette butts on the side of fourteenth street" wind their way through the tunes like Carolina copperheads. The result is a thread that binds all of McMillan's music together: being broke down. Whether it's the death of a friend or the distance of a lover, the ghost that haunts John Mark's soul seems to brood on the back of his brokenness. And really, from the blues to Bob Dylan, what could be more American than that?
The Song Inside the Sounds of the Breaking Down is available now on iTunes, CD Baby, and on John Mark's website at www.thejohnmark.com. It was produced by Elijah Mosley and features James Duke on lead guitars, Al Sergel on drums, Andy Kurzweg on bass, and Joel Simmons on keys.
"A patriotic sound that incorperates bold stripped down blues with a voice reminiscent of Pete Yorn and a broken America"
- HM Magazine
The title says it all for Charlotte, NC rock'n'roller John Mark McMillan's sophomore effort The Song Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down. John Mark recently sat down with Braille's Thomas Torrey for an in-depth discussion on the inspirations and personal nature of the record.
The songs came out of the tragic death of McMillan's best friend, just months after John Mark's debut record Hope Anthology Vol. 1 hit stores. The grief that followed, and the subsequent rise from under it, is what bore the fruit for John Mark's newest anthology. "The album is about what happens when you fall apart," McMillan said. "I don't think there is any way of avoiding painful experiences as a human. Those painful experiences can either make us angry and bitter and cynical, or they can break us and change us and we can become more than what we were even before."
When asked about the role of faith in his music, McMillan responded, "Christianity has to have a place in my art because it's who I am. If it didn't then I'd come across as pretentious. People can see through facades easily." But he adds, "The gospel has been abused so often that people hear the name of Jesus and they think of a used car salesman. We've got to change that. There are so many completely broken and devasted people in the world. I think we ignore this as artists and as Christians. I didnt want to do that. I wanted to put something out there that people could relate to. That's what the album's all about, the song that comes out of falling apart."
- WSLC Radio
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Jesus in John Markjohnisfast wrote on December 22, 2008
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