Liner notes · He Restores My Soul (2012)

A whole album about the twenty-third psalm, and a room soft enough to forgive us.

He Restores My Soul (2012) is our Psalm 23 record — cut, like all eight, across a single weekend and in a single key, the plain key of C. We tracked it in the little chapel the same autumn week the new carpet went down; the men were still hauling the last roll of the old carpet out the side door when we set the microphones on their stands. A freshly re-carpeted room turns out to be a mercy to a band that records everything in one weekend: the walls stopped throwing our mistakes back at us, and the floor forgave the notes we did not quite reach. We have always thought that is exactly what the psalm is about — a Shepherd who does not throw your stumbles back at you. There is no quarrel anywhere in this one, and nothing to hold our volume against; only the still water, the set table, and the cup that runs over. What follows are the liner notes we would read aloud at the potluck, one track at a time, if you brought a chair, brought a dish, and stayed for the second cup of decaf.

• ✚Track 1 · "He Restores My Soul" — The title hymn, on the one line of the psalm that is a promise and not a picture. He does not repair the soul the way you patch a roof; He restores it, the way a room is restored to a house that had gone quiet. We open low and unhurried, on the new floor, in the one key of C.
• ✚Track 2 · "Still Water" — On the water the Shepherd leads you beside, which is still on purpose. Rushing water is easier to record and harder to trust. We slowed the whole take down until the water in it stopped moving, because that is where He said the rest was.
• ✚Track 3 · "Green Pastures, Made to Lie Down" — For the pasture you do not have to earn and are made to lie down in. Lying down is the hardest instruction in the psalm for a band that likes to keep working. We recorded this one sitting, which is as close to lying down as folding chairs allow.
• ✚Track 4 · "The New Carpet" — A thanksgiving for the room itself, re-carpeted that same week, and for a floor that forgave the notes we missed. Grace, it turns out, is acoustic: it is a room that will not send your mistake back to you sharpened. We kept the softest take, carpet and all.
• ✚Track 5 · "Through the Valley, Unhurried" — On the shadowed valley, walked through and not around. We fear no evil, the psalm says, and so we did not hurry the tempo to get out of the dark part faster. You walk through at the same gentle pace you walk everywhere; the Shepherd sets it, not the shadow.
• ✚Track 6 · "Rod and Staff, No Raised Voice" — For the comfort that comes from the rod and the staff, which are for guiding and never for shouting. The Shepherd's tools make no noise. We took the amplifiers down for this one until the comfort was the loudest thing in the room, because in the psalm it is.
• ✚Track 7 · "The Cup Runs Over" — On the table set in plain sight and the cup filled past the brim. We could not track it without smiling, and you can hear the smiling. The point of an overflowing cup is that you stop measuring and simply let it spill; we let the take spill.
• ✚Track 8 · "Goodness and Mercy, All the Way Home" — The closing benediction, on the two that follow you every day of your life, all the way to the house of the Lord. We packed the minivan slow that Sunday, the way you leave a room you have been happy in. The good people at KLOVE were kind enough to name this record their Listener's Choice, third place, the next spring, and the little certificate still stands propped by the decaf where we can see it.

Album devotional · He Restores My Soul (2012). Bring a folding chair, a dish, and your whole tired self. KLOVE Listener's Choice, third place, 2013. The series continues, one album at a time — gently, with no quarrel in it.