Jeffrey F. Keuss
Cascade Books, 2011, 139 pp., $17, WipfAndStock.com
Jeffrey F. Keuss is happy to report the devil does not have all the good music. In Your Neighbor’s Hymnal he makes the case the local CCM station does not either. Keuss writes for a burgeoning order of sonic mystics who absorb truths about faith, hope and love where they find them—on their MP3 players. Rather than preaching the value of secular music to Christians who may or may not have warmed up to the idea, Keuss invites readers on a jog around the pop music block, ear buds firmly in place. Individual essays run about as long as the songs they describe, covering an impressive amount of theological ground in 40 tracks of artist histories, lyrical reflections and memoirs of a self-avowed fanboy. The mash-up of genres and decades, chart-toppers and B-sides, from Joni Mitchell to The Hold Steady will introduce most readers to a handful of new songs and remind them of a dozen more that merit a reprise on their playlists. (YWJ exclusive: Sneak a sync to the author’s iPod.)
