While I was at the Continuous Worship conference at Mars Hill this past week I had the pleasure of hearing the vision behind that church’s music department. And man they have a very unique but amazing way of carrying out their vision, but that’s another post. The point of this post is about a band I stumbled upon at the conference called Barcelona. One of the members of Barcelona is a worship leader at Mars Hill and spoke at the songwriting session. Let me tell you I was blown away by Barcelona’s album. The songs are rich, melody wise beautifully creative while not floating up into the stratosphere. Yes I know there’s a word for that, but every music review says “sensibility” and I was just trying to avoid it but I can’t apparently.

Lyrically these guys are on point, cutting and deep, always serving the song, rarely if ever cutesy. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves. Some of my favorite lines are:

“She’s lost her sense of light, she has to hold my hand
And I know we might be two kids without their jackets”

- Get Up, Get Up, Get Up

“This space is tight, I’m running out of air
And for the moment you all can fit
This friend he stayed, has almost finished me
and I won’t buy my time to see it blown”

- Response

So go check them out on their myspace or their website, or on iTunes.

This is an amazing look into how the US military is turning things around in Iraq. It’s brutally honest and very encouraging. We ARE maintaining the moral high ground, Iraqis are seeing this and turning on Al Qaeda. It’s a long read but well worth it.

This 29 year old woman from China notices blood in her urine and goes to the doctor. Finds out she has 23 needles in her body that have made their way into her vital organs including her lungs, liver, bladder and kidneys. The belief is her grandparents tried to kill her when she was a baby so they could have a boy in her place.

It amazes me that the world continues to view China’s murderous, illogical, oppressive population control policy in such a passive disapproval. What they are doing is absolutely insane, they are crazy, there’s just no other way to say it.