Music Minute

Hey there! Jen here with another Music Minute to show you what's hot off the presses this month in Christian music. As always, don't be afraid to take a chance and listen to something a little outside of your comfort zone. You might like it!

What's new: This year of music is just getting started, but there's new stuff from Fiction Family you really ought to check out. So I'm highlighting that!

What we like about it: Maybe you know this already, but the entire music business is really being rewritten and re-formed before your eyes. The iTunes Music Store has revolutionized music delivery (a fancy way of saying that CDs are no longer your only option). All over the country there are people making records in their basements using Mac laptops and Pro Tools, and they won't need record labels to launch their careers. Like many of the acts from the last year, they can use a combination of MySpace and iTunes to get things going. So changes are coming, and this reviewer thinks we'll see a return to the single-based record market of the 1950s and '60s. (Right now, everything is album-based. Do you see it?)

Fiction Family is a new band made up of Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek, two friends-since-high-school from San Diego, CA. Their mutual friends kept encouraging them to work together, but it wasn't until they kept running into each other over and over at local coffee shops that they finally decided to write some music. And boy, are we ever glad they did! These two serve up sparkly, jangly, brilliant pop tunes with just a smidge of retro. The album is called Fiction Family. But if you're in the market for a single, we really like "What's Near."



What we're looking forward to: Southern rockers (as in, they are from Georgia *and* they play Southern rock) Julian Driverelease their debut album this month, My Coming Day. You can already find their EP at the iTunes store and their songs on MySpace. For its solid rock melody, soaring vocals, and great lyrics, we like "Cry," and hope the rest of the album is as fun to listen to.

What we don't like: abandoned Christmas trees by the side of the road, stale cookies, and having cold toes.