Album Review :
David Crowder Band - Live at the Golden Dome (Feb. 21, 2008)

Setlist:
1. The Glory of It All
2. Here Is Our King
3. No One Like You
4. Foreverandever, etc.
5. Remedy
6. Open Skies
7. I Saw The Light
8. Never Let Go
9. Wholly Yours
10. Never Ending
11. Everything Glorious
12. You Are My Joy
13. Rescue is Coming
14. O Praise Him (All This For a King)
15. Undignified
16. Sing Like The Saints
Encore: Here I Am To Worship

This isn’t really a review. It’s a fable. It’s a timeless tale intended to teach a lesson. See, I didn’t go to this show because I was a fan of David Crowder Band. I went because I was invited, and I thought it might be better than finishing a Physics test. I was, incidentally, right. But this was already true by the time I had downed my second Filet O’ Fish and we had decided to figure out just where exactly Beaver County Community College was anyway. So yeah, I had fun. But then I got to the show. And it was an experience.

Let me just lay it out for you: this concert was flat-out amazing. And I don’t mean because the lighting was sweet, or because Crowder played “Never Ending” with a Guitar Hero controller, or because a really attractive girl two rows in front of me was dancing in this sort of self-aware, “I-don’t-care-about-what’s-fashionable” sort of way. No, it was amazing because David Crowder and his Band write incredibly catchy, incredibly passionate songs of praise to God. They’re the Jimmy Eat World of the worship scene. They get vastly overlooked by people like me because they write worship music, and worship might be the most cluttered and generally prosaic genre out there at the moment. But not so with David Crowder Band. Every second of their performance was fascinating, from the passionate opener “The Glory of It All” to the banjo-driven Hank Williams cover “I Saw The Light,” from the hook-laden single “Everything Glorious” until the frenzied closers and fan favorites “Undignified” and “Sing Like the Saints.”

I could describe every song, every lighting change, every fun antic of the band, but by this point, you should get where I’m going with this instead. The moral of this story is that some books are far better than their covers. The other moral of this story is that you should probably buy yourself a David Crowder Band CD. As the band left the stage, no one left the arena, even though they had played sixteen songs already. This is probably partially due to the fact that they were the only band there, and thus the show hadn’t been very long, but it’s also certain that DCB has the X-factor that makes people simply unable to leave until the lighting comes back up for the final time. The band took the stage again, somewhat awkwardly as, Crowder explained, they hadn’t actually planned on playing an encore, but they gave “Here I Am To Worship” every bit the heartfelt and worshipful performance that they give their normal setlist. As we pulled out of that parking lot in the middle of somewhere in the middle of nowhere in western Pennsylvania, I knew that I had seen an incredible performance and that God had been praised in some pretty interesting ways. And I knew my iPod wanted to get in on it.

You will like this band if you like: Hillsong United, Jimmy Eat World, Desperation Band, Anberlin minus the punk leanings, Sanctus Real.

If you want a good playlist to start with, this is what I recommend: “Remedy,” “Wholly Yours,” “No One Like You,” “Never Let Go,” “O Praise Him,” and/or “Everything Glorious.”

The Headless Horseman