Coin

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COIN's self-titled debut album dropped in early June of this year and is thematically focused on the pursuit of dreams, balancing relationships, and the acceptance of burgeoning adulthood. The album seems to consist of two parts: the first focuses mostly on the optimism tied to growing up and the pursuit of dreams; the second meditates on the effects of pessimistic people/situations/relationships that can deter and discourage the dream chaser.

The album explores myriad emotions including fear, uncertainty, responsible recklessness, heartbreak, and other adjustments that tend to flavor the transition from the teens to the twenties. In the song "Fingers Crossed," the fear and uncertainty are especially loud in the lines: "I feel a little obsolete / we've changed a lot since seventeen / we all grow older, still incomplete." What COIN may have imagined and boasted about on the eve of adulthood looks very different in reality as they step steadily into their twenties. So many things change between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one: shifting confidence and assurance, shifting dreams and desires, shifting goals and expectations. What COIN may have realized is that, with age, maturity, and understanding, life doesn't become more simple, it becomes more deep. They may have solved their challenging seventeen-year-old problems, but now they have complex twenty-year-old problems. We all grow older, still incomplete. Becoming complete is challenging and difficult, it is a thing worth fighting for, it is an unquenchable process. This exercise of becoming complete, becoming whole, is, in fact, a welcome and advertised side effect of the Christian faith (see Romans 12).

In the second half of the album, the celebration of dreams becomes a battle against dead-weight that has been prohibiting progress: for COIN, this dead-weight takes the form of a caustic relationship. The progression from partners in love/art, to distant lovers, to the final days of the relationship, is a heartbreaking, poignant, and conflicted decline. Without losing the musical energy and charisma of the opening tracks, the closing tracks have a blue tint. Yet, there are sustained moments in the midst of this tragedy where COIN maintains strength. In the song "Better," honesty emerges as the most desired virtue: "I only really want the truth / a little more than I want you." The truth that the relationship is not working out, or the truth that they are not really in love, or the truth that she does not believe or share his dreams, are each better and greater – though exponentially harder – things to believe and accept than anything that is untrue.

Whatever challenges they may be dealing with on the album, COIN's overall optimism and determinism never cease to shine through. Whether with whimsical and clever lyrics, sparkly synth riffs, intricate guitar layers, confident percussion, or bass that jives, I hope COIN will win you over with dance-out-loud energy and riotous enthusiasm. COIN will encourage you to run after your dreams, make them real, abandon your obstacles, and they might help you drown out the televangelists who keep twisting your arms. Will you listen?

- Mike Lentz

Presentations at Calvin University

Colony House + COIN
Wednesday, October 7, 2015 08:00:00 PM
Covenant Fine Arts Center Auditorium

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