Description
Trophies is the fifth full-length album by the American alternative rock band Luxury, independently released on Awake Productions in 2015. The album was recorded with Matt Goldman at Glow in the Dark Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2014. Trivia: Three members of the band are now Orthodox priests.
I’m not sure why they decided to do it. Maybe to prove they still could after a decade of absence. Maybe there were still songs rattling around inside of them, even though they now live in different states and have vastly different occupations. Or maybe they just missed the spark that happens when you get in a room with your friends, pick up some instruments, and let the Spirit flow. But regardless of why Luxury recorded a new album after all these years, I’m very glad they did. Simply put, Trophies contains the best music I’ve ever heard from them.
The past ten years have been very kind to Luxury; their music has never been tighter, fuller, or more intense than it is here. Consider Lee Bozeman’s vocals. Yes, he still sounds like Thom Yorke covering Morrissey (or is it the other way around?), but time has lent him both grit and subtlety, and his singing is all the better for it. He navigates sometimes twisty, convoluted lyrics — Example: “A television set/ We couldn’t count the hours/ ’Cos now the teacher speaks/ From ‘inside a pornographer’s trousers’” — with ease. When he lets loose a bit, as he does on «Parallel Love»‘s chorus and the slow-burning «The War on Women», his croon is effortless, soaring. And in Trophies’ slower moments, like the piano-and-strings ballad «Words of Mouth», his singing is frail, barely rising above a whisper.
And about those twisty lyrics: part of the fun of a Luxury album is attempting to unpack and decipher the oft-cryptic lyrics, which are full of sketches and impressions. Trophies is no different. Still, certain themes seem rather prevalent. There are hints of spiritual struggles — not too surprising, given that three of Luxury’s members are Orthodox priests and another one a former theology professor. Meanwhile, «The War on Women» could easily be a bitter rumination on youthful lust and shame.
Love, too, is a recurring theme: protective love for families, the heady innocence of first love, love for unbelievers. As Trophies winds down with «The Gates of Paradise (Give Praise Where Praise Is Due)», several of these themes come to a head. At one point, Bozeman wonders, “Do I feel love where I used to feel hate?” Later, he admits “‘Cos unbelievers are strange/ I loved a few, I remember their names/ And you still think if they just had a taste/ But they won’t.” Sounds like something a priest might write while wrestling with how to serve the skeptics around him. It’s therefore interesting that the song ends with Bozeman intoning “For awhile, everything was okay.” Such words may hint at resignation but they also evoke resolution and trust.
Musically, Trophies roars. A heavier Smiths is how I’ve often described Luxury in the past, but such a description seems lacking now. «Parallel Love» and «You Must Change Your Life» launch out of the starting gate and never stop to look back. At the same time, there’s a complexity and lushness ‘neath the intensity, thanks to the band’s triple guitar set-up. On «Museums In Decline», you can hear all sorts of interplay and flourishes via the six-string work by Bozeman, his brother Jamey, and Matt Hinton. (Lately, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to ambient and electronic music, so it’s refreshing to hear a guitar-centric album as excellent as Trophies.)
Recent years have seen a number of long-absent artists reemerge from the mists of time. There’s the resurgence of My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and others from the shoegaze old guard. The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus have a new album coming out soon. D’Angelo, Babes in Toyland, Jawbox, The Replacements, Faith No More… the list goes on. Trophies is no less noteworthy a return. Usually, when hearing new music after such a long absence, one’s response is something like “I hope I don’t have to wait X years for their next album.” I’ll refrain from that this time because Trophies feels like a miracle, considering the band members’ now-disparate lives, and you don’t push your luck with miracles.
An undeniable urgency flows throughout Trophies, however, and I confess, it feels like this is the band’s final shot at being Luxury. Maybe that won’t be the case; maybe the future holds still more music from them. But if not, Trophies is a fantastic final statement, a perfect way to end more than two decades of music-making. [Jason Morehead, Opuszine, February 2015]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/trophies/1460685148)
CD tracklist:
01. Ginsberg Reading ‘Howl’
02. Parallel Love
03. Trophies
04. Don’t Feel Bad If You Don’t Feel Better Right Away
05. The War on Women
06. You Must Change Your Life
07. Museums in Decline
08. Words of Mouth
09. Courage, Courage
10. The Gates of Paradise (Give Praise Where Praise Is Due)
Note: Released on both 12-inch vinyl LP and CD. Available at bandcamp: https://luxury.bandcamp.com/album/trophies
Luxury Trophies on CD
Luxury Trophies on clear vinyl with limited edition “Aurora” cover
[responsive_vimeo 120423456]Biography / Autobiography: A Story of a Band Called Luxury – Kickstarter Trailer
‘Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury’ follows the path of Luxury, a band from small-town Georgia, who, on the cusp of success, suffer a devastating touring wreck with long-term consequences. In the intervening years, they continue to make records and three members of the band become Eastern Orthodox priests. Through interviews and archival footage, ‘Parallel Love’ tells the gripping and poignant story of Luxury and documents the making of a new record, now as priests.
Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury by Matt Hinton
2018 / Awake Productions
Genre: DocumentaryThis documentary about the indie Christian band has the requisite rock n’ roll drama, but also offers some deeper ruminations on faith and art.
I fell headlong into the Tooth & Nail Records catalog during the late ’90s and early-to-mid ’00s, attended the Cornerstone Festival on numerous occasions, and spent countless hours perusing Christian bookstores for music that resonated with both my faith and my tastes. Not surprisingly, then, Matt Hinton’s Parallel Love totally worked for me on multiple levels.
First and most straightforwardly, as a purely nostalgic trip through a bygone era — when Christians were making music that was “too Christian” for the secular market and “too weird” for the Christian market (this was, as someone in the documentary notes, years before artists like Sufjan Stevens and Pedro the Lion helped bridge that gap) — Parallel Love was an absolute blast to watch.
It was a thrill every time folks like Chris Colbert, Steve Hindalong, Andrew Prickett, and Mark Salomon appeared on screen to offer some insight or share some behind-the-scenes info. Those names probably mean nothing to most of you, but if you know, well, you know. And the abundant footage of Cornerstone Festivals from years past was equally enjoyable. Seeing those familiar tents, stages, campsites, and dirt roads put me right back in the middle of that Bushnell, Illinois campground in a keenly felt way. (I don’t know if it’s necessary for a journalistic disclaimer, but as a personal badge of coolness, I feel compelled to inform you that several of my Cornerstone photos appear in Parallel Love. I might even be lurking in the background of some of the Cornerstone video footage, as well.)
But of course, Parallel Love is the story of just one of those bands that occupied the weird parallel universe that was ’90s indie/alternative Christian music. Luxury’s members met at Toccoa Falls College, a private Christian college in northeast Georgia. From the very get-go, however, it was clear that they had no intention of staying inside any “Christian” music silo, as evidenced by their battery of influences — punk bands like Rites of Spring and The Nation of Ulysses, alternative mainstays like Depeche Mode and The Smiths, glam rock from KISS and Queen — and frontman Lee Bozeman’s provocative stage presence.
With its mix of talking heads (e.g., friends, family, label execs, journalists), old VHS footage, and numerous press clippings, Parallel Love chronicles the band’s unlikely origins and meteoric rise. Luxury grabbed people’s attention from the start, and controversy surrounded their 1995 debut, Amazing and Thankyou, a raucous album with lyrics about gender and sexuality that ruffled feathers (rumors swirled about the band members’ sexuality) and led to people returning their CDs to Christian bookstores.
(Sidenote: Back in the day, Christian bookstores like Lemstone and Family Christian were often the only places to buy any Christian music, regardless of genre. Given their often-conservative customer base, though, this could be a fraught scenario whenever art from the fringes of Christendom — like Luxury — appeared on the shelves.)
Following their debut, Luxury performed a blistering set at Cornerstone ’95 that only solidified the buzz surrounding them. But just as they were on the verge of making it, everything fell apart. A horrific car accident on the drive back to Georgia left several members hospitalized and their plans in ruins. (The band’s own VHS footage of their members in the hospital, wearing neck braces and groaning in agony from their injuries, is harrowing to watch.) Following a year-long hiatus and recovery, Luxury released their sophomore album, 1996’s The Latest & The Greatest — but by then, their moment had passed. The band parted with their label even as the members went their own separate ways, starting families and moving all over the country.
It’s here that Parallel Love is at its darkest, exploring drummer Glenn Black’s health issues related to both the 1995 car accident as well as PTSD stemming from the childhood trauma of his stepfather’s mental illness and his mother’s suicide. (At one point, Black comments that a documentary could be made on just everything he’s experienced, and he’s probably right.) But this is also when we see what is perhaps the strangest twist in Luxury’s already-compelling story: three members — Lee Bozeman, guitarist Jamey Bozeman, and bassist Chris Foley — find their way to the Orthodox Church, and subsequently become ordained priests.
The documentary’s final act becomes a fascinating rumination on the relationship between art, vocation, and spirituality, as the Bozemans and Foley discuss their journey to Orthodoxy, their experiences as priests and pastors, and the surprising similarities between being a priest and being in a rock band. I’ve spent a lot of time critiquing how the Church (mis)uses art, and I’ve written a lot about the interplay between faith and art, often within the context of indie/underground/alternative music. As such, this final act especially resonated with me. (On a related note, Lee Bozeman’s thoughts on serving his congregation out of his weakness were personally encouraging, as I recently became an elder in my church.)
Parallel Love ends with Luxury reuniting to record what would eventually become 2015’s Trophies, arguably their best album to date. It’s a remarkable album to even exist, given everything that the band has experienced in their long history. As I wrote in my review, Trophies feels like a miracle. A group of friends meet in a small rural Christian college, live through life-threatening accidents and childhood traumas, and experience the highs and lows of an industry that’s too-often focused on commerce and propaganda over art, and yet, they still remain close enough to recapture the spark that first brought them together and record some of their finest songs to date.
Sounds like divine providence to me.
Even if you don’t know Cornerstone from Purple Door from Ichthus, have never heard of record labels like Bulletproof, or have no attachment to “Chrindie” music from the ’90s and early ’00s, Parallel Love is a fascinating story with all of the requisite rock n’ roll twists (e.g., young talented band, music industry woes, controversy, struggles and trials to overcome). But if you’re a Christian who’s at all interested in the relationship between faith and art, or understanding how your faith works itself out in your vocation, then Parallel Love will give you plenty to think about. That, and some awesome songs from a band that deserves any and all acclaim that comes their way — even if it takes a decade or two.
[Jason Morehead, Opus, September 14, 2022]
The Transfigured Life, October 2013. What made these Punk Rock Musicians become Orthodox Priests?
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