Derek Webb

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Look at the world and describe it. That’s an artist’s job description according to singer/songwriter/agitator Derek Webb, and he takes his job very seriously. Over his almost alarmingly long career (nearly 25 years, counting his tenure as founder & lead singer/songwriter of Texas-based folk rock ensemble Caedmon’s Call), he has risked everything year after year to do that job.

While Webb is most identified with his provocative & fearless writing style (to say nothing of his production style, which has zigged & zagged with almost every album), in more recent years his description of the world has done more to comfort the afflicted than his typical M.O. of afflicting the comfortable.

The release of 2017’s Fingers Crossed, a self-described ‘tale of two divorces’ documenting both the end of a marriage & the deconstruction of his Christian beliefs, put Webb firmly in the ranks of friends like David Bazan (Pedro The Lion), penning hymns of deconversion & doubt. The Fingers Crossed tour, like the album, was a vulnerably quiet & intimate affair with nearly all the shows in fan’s living rooms, processing their collective grief over their loss of faith like pop-up house churches.

“There’s a great relief and personal satisfaction that comes with finding the end of your grief around a particular season, when you’ve really put in the time and learned all you could and come out on the other side,” Webb recalls. “I was suddenly feeling a completely different energy, seeing new colors when I looked at the world. TARGETS is the soundtrack for the world as I see it and wish to see it. It’s a defiantly joyous rock & roll album about love and unbelief and everything you find on the other side of grief.”

And defiantly joyous is precisely what TARGETS is. Clocking in at a swift 37 minutes, this 9 song barn-burner is about finding everything he lost on the Fingers Crossed LP. New love, unexpected strength, hope for the future. It’s all there, dressed up in equally raw & sophisticated live, full-band arrangements.

The fun, futuristic fuzz of Webb’s electric guitars are flanked with a rock-ready rhythm section made up of old friends: Stockholm Syndrome touring drummer Chris Kimmerer (who also co-produced the album with Webb) and multi-instrumentalist Josh Reedy (formerly of DecembeRadio) on bass, both on loan from their day jobs backing country phenom, Thomas Rhett.

Songs like “All Of Me Is Here,” “State Change,” and the album’s title track all have the transcendent lyrical urgency of Arcade Fire or Bazan (again) but lightened with Beck-like arrangements, while album tracks like Good Grief and Death With Benefits will satisfy even the hardest-core Derek Webb fan.

TARGETS is the sound of a man who is road-wise and yet full of hope, redefining himself yet again in the middle of his third decade of work in the indie music space. If this is the ‘soundtrack for the world as (He)… wishes to see it,’ 2020 is shaping up to be a very, very good year.