“Momentum,” by Lance West
By Jet Nova, critic-at-large
Down South, we call a certain kind of Christian supplicant a God Botherer. This is the
believer with a perpetual wish list, a permanent Get out of Hell Free card, and the expectation
that his Personal Jesus will swing the bat for him consistently enough that he can consider
himself a “winner.” This appears to be the Jesus of the contemporary Christian music I hear on
the radio – a breezy guitar/treacly piano update on the plink-plink of blissed-out harpists on
clouds. trumpeting the notion that the primary mission of a personal Jesus is to make you feel
good all the time.
I’m open to the experience of divine guidance just so long as it reckons with the paradox
of peace vs. desolation that comes with the righteous commitment to stand alone on moral
principle. The one thing I feel sure of is that we’d be absolutely screwed without Grace – the
ability to forgive one another and to be kind when there’s plenty of cause to be mean. Grace
holds special meaning for those of us whose minds are fractured by mental illness; the clawing,
groping search for equilibrium so persistently denied by a cruel and arbitrary inner judge that too
many of us mistake for the voice of God. We have to ask forgiveness more often than others for
erratic, often destructive behavior that has little to do with character.
On Momentum, the only thing Lance West is looking to get out of prayer is to experience
what it feels like to be loved unconditionally by a love of infinite depth and power, and to be
transformed by it. The EP is coupled with West’s autobiography of the same name, which
includes the subheading, “An Introspective Narrative on Overcoming Bipolar Disorder with
Meds, Music and Faith.” Far from a torturous trip through the bipolar mind, the EP’s gentle
tones stand as testament to the legitimacy of the hard-won peace West has found. The only
aspect of the music that even hints at the turmoil behind its realization is in his burnt-around-the-
edges voice.
The project was initially conceived when West noticed the word “momentum” on a
license plate frame while driving down the California coast. “I realized that everything I had
achieved and would achieve required discipline and consistency in generating momentum,” he
says. It doesn’t sound like a particularly astute statement until one considers that the bipolar
mind – with its breakneck lift-offs, aimless rocket flights and ugly crash landings – learns to
profoundly distrust the process of momentum for its utter inability to regulate it.
Bipolar Disorder generally manifests during puberty, so it’s fitting that the EP opens with
“Parachute Pants,” a laid-back rap that skulks through the burgeoning hallways of a suburban
high school, infused with Blaxploitation wah-wah guitar and a tumbling bass line (think “Isaac
Hayes scores Afterschool Special”). Parachute pants were a thing in the 1980s. Known for
multiple, asymmetrical zippered pockets with enough combined room to carry most of the
survival tools on an Army Surplus store’s main counter, they serve here as a metaphor for a
gifted teenager’s doomed bid for acceptance by far less curious minds, descending like an alien
into a milieu that hasn’t yet seen E.T. West sums it up neatly in the couplet: “I didn’t make the
team/but I made the program for low self-esteem.”
What is a Black Sabbath-nourished kid to do but comingle with other outcasts (bonds
likely formed in the aforementioned program), acquire cheap instruments and a practice space in
which to scream outraged poetry? (See West’s excellent bands, Wood and Human Anomaly, for
this aspect of his vision).
After the critical grounding of “Parachute Pants”, Momentum evolves as an
impressionistic sound painting of spiritual ache and fulfillment, filtered through handmade
idiosyncrasies reminiscent of Brian Wilson’s 1977 album, The Beach Boys Love You. Each song
is a Rorschach of musical invention – a King Crimson-like guitar passage here, a perfectly
placed bass countermelody there – all synched up to a clap-track. In “All Along,” a gentle piano
melody crashes into a hard waltz of distorted guitars as West’s voice goes from delicate falsetto
to deadpan. In “Doobie,” God himself implores just as earnestly as his human counterpart,
“Reach out, reach out, reach out to me.”
The title track serves as the EP’s mission statement, telegraphing Grace in the delicate
circularity of its chiming guitars, its melody and its chorus. The song’s genesis is in a dream in
which West asked his favorite artist, Mat Kearney, how he could help him break into the music
business. Kearney responded. “I can’t give you a career, but I can give you a melody,” after
which he sang the chorus. Says West, “Since the melody was revealed in a dream state, I was
trying to sonically capture my perception of the feeling of flight – which I’d felt so many times
in dreams. That and the cyclical nature of the universe.”
The repetition of this effect makes Momentum a transcendent work; a soothed and
soothing triumph based on the renewal of a tormented mind through not only faith in God, but a
deep emotional realization of the gift of Grace and West’s newfound ability to rest in it. “The
underlying theme is that momentum is required to excel and transcend limitation and that it can
hardly be done without the anointing of God’s grace,” says West. “It’s really about destiny.”