Just seeing the words “christian” and “rock” in the same sentence is sometimes (maybe oftentimes) call for alarm. People’s minds go to the depths of Creed and perhaps never pause to think of the deeply personal nature of a faith—it’s when you try to push that shit on other people that it becomes objectionable—and how its incorporation into music can be a powerful expression of the hope attached to religion, or a reckoning with the daily abomination-state of today. Positive force. Coping mechanism. Meh. This coming from a born-and-raised catholic-Italian who’s become so jaded in all regards, any notion of god would seem an unaffordable luxury. But really, I still find myself in awe of family members who still hold to their beliefs so strongly. What must it be like to have that kind of optimism? To have the possibility of that kind of peace?

I digress, but this all relates to the output of Philadelphia solo composer Ben Rosenbach, who goes by the moniker Our Alarm Clock, and whose new album, Time Flies. Suns rise and shadows fall. Let time go by. Love is forever over all. is out April 12. The record’s twelve songs, “reflect [Rosenbach’s] daily search for hope and rest,” ebbing and flowing in calamity the way one’s ability to remain unshaken might. Such is certainly at hand on “A Sealed Up Secret Wish,” an ever growing, ever building symphony of bright synths and guitar and crashing percussion. Surreal notes open the track, surreal in their kind of flanging and delay, each note crescendoing in seemingly overwhelming succession. And then a melody is established. Minimalistic and obviously synthetic, but built upon with thickly distorted guitar and heavied-up drums. Theatrical doesn’t even begin to describe it. The whole thing sounds like what you might think swimming across an ocean would. A total “leap.” Sometimes beautiful, sometimes harrowing, sometimes vigorous, sometimes completely serene. Maybe that last one is where you drown. Or survive.

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