Catholic Artist: L'Angelus (ft. Sam fangirling about one of her favorite musical groups)

Being reintroduced to L'Angelus (thanks, Grim!) is the reason I came up with this Catholic Artists/Catholic Art series idea in the first place, so I am very excited to be writing this post! (Please excuse me if it gets a little swoony... I've listened to this group's albums manymanymany times in the last few months, so I have a lot of things to say!)

(For parameters on the WILT & WELHS lists, I'm using which albums of theirs are on Spotify, not going through YouTube to find everything they've ever sung. Just fyi. Even though there is some good stuff on YouTube. Like this. And this. And this. ;))

What I've Listened To:
Ca C'est Bon!
Love Don't Care
"Be Thou My Vision"
"A Child Is Born"

What Else L'Angelus Has Sung:

O Night Divine
Sacred Hymns Collection

L'Angelus [pronounced lawn-zhay-LOOSE] created an album called Ca C'est Bon! which my mom would play for us on a regular basis when I was wee, and it was always my request for cleanup music, because it is so upbeat and peppy! But I didn't realize that it was a Catholic group until actually just this past summer. "Samantha," you might say, "it is blindingly obvious that they are a Catholic group, or at the very least Christian. They literally have a song about a woman looking for love in all the wrong places and finding it in Jesus." Okay, but hear me out (and more on that song in a second). As a kid, I didn't have a divide in my mind between "Catholic/Christian faith" and "everything else" (I still don't really...hence this series, I guess). I was steeped in Catholicism enough that I kind of expected it in everything. If this CD meshed better with our worldview than some other things we listened to, that was great, but not something to freak out about. It just felt natural, and when something feels natural when you're little, that's nothing to write home about. It was only just recently that I realized how awesome this group truly is. (I think I mentioned in my Tolkien post that I sometimes have a harder time recognizing Catholicity than non-Catholicity, just because Catholicity/Christianity meshes so well. Same principle here.)

Before I start talking about their music, let me talk a bit about the group itself (most info from HERE). L'Angelus was originally a mom and her four oldest children (ultimately, of ten). First, the mom was performing on her own, and gradually her kids began to join her, until they became L'Angelus. Realizing the heritage of their music in Louisiana/Cajun culture, they moved to Louisiana to continue their music there. They performed together while the mom, Linda, was pregnant, they let their younger sister be on their CD (more on that in a moment, too), and they named their group after the Angelus, the prayer traditionally said at 6 am, noon, and 6 pm, when the bells of the churches would ring out over the fields. Can one get a whole lot more Catholic (and awesome) than that? Eventually, the group became just the four oldest children, but they're still phenomenal. 

Now, on to thoughts on why L'Angelus is awesome, why I love their music, and why it meshes with my ideas on Catholic art and artists, as laid forth in the initial post of this series. I ended up making this into somewhat eclectic bullet points, but I hope you can make sense of the workings of my slightly chaotic brain. :)

1. They're just a lot of fun to listen to. They bring SO MUCH joy to their music. It's incredibly peppy and upbeat. This is why I loved it as cleanup music, and also how it got me through my last week or so of my summer job (the goat farm. Milking eight hours a day requires some L'Angelus, in my opinion). You can tell they're having a ton of fun on stage. And all the music is just so beautiful and well-written! At least one of their songs brings me to the brink of tears consistently because it's so beautiful, which, let me tell you, is not a common feat. Also, many of their songs tell stories, which are my favorite kind of songs. :)

2. They consistently convey a Catholic/Christian view of marriage and how love should work throughout their work. A lot of the time, pop, foot-tappy songs are just absolutely cringey in their POV on love and marriage, if marriage is in the picture at all. Not L'Angelus! Many of the songs they sing, at least on Ca C'est Bon! are original, and that gives them the ability to write beautiful songs wherein the lovers are either married or on the way to marriage. Many of their songs are about marriage and married people and courtship done well, and it's JUST BEAUTIFUL OK? But none of this view of love seems forced or unnatural...I only noticed it after listening to Ca C'est Bon! four times in one day. Heh. It's a little bit like that Lewis quote where he talks about sneaking Christianity into children's stories/fairytales and thus making it more palatable for the general public.

Some examples:

"And I gave you my heart/You gave me yourself" --"Ca C'est Bon"

"Well not too long ago you asked me for my hand/So boy let's start those chapel bells a-ringin'/" --"Goin' Back to Ponchatoula"

"So, I called up her daddy/To ask for his blessing" --"Rice and Gravy"

"Oh my lover, you know I'm so sorry/I haven't kept that promise that I made." --"River Road" (referencing marriage vows, which require much grace in order to keep!)

"I had to hold my breath/Cuz I almost said/Marry me, Marianne/I just want to hold your hand forever." --"Marianne" (His first instinct when meeting her is to ask to marry her. And the whole song is about their courtship and his proposal. <3) 

"No matter what you've done/I love you for who you are." --"Love Don't Care"

"In the spring you swore we'd be married/But I'm waiting still for you./When your hair turns to silver/I'll still call you 'Delta Flower'" --"Jolie Blonde"

3. One of my favorite themes in their work, which goes right along with the above point, is that children are referenced A LOT. Which both makes sense, given the heading-towards-marriage that I just talk about, and given that, though it's stereotypical, it's true that Catholics love babies. XD Children are present almost constantly in Catholic culture, ESPECIALLY in church--the best Sundays are when there are the most crying babies in Mass. So, the inclusion of many mentions of children is a big win, in my book.

For example:

On "Angelle's Tippy Teaux Two-Step", they have their sister/daughter Angelle, who was around three at the time, contribute vocals, which is adorable. 

"We gonna have a bunch of babies/We gonna feed 'em rice and gravy" --"Rice and Gravy"

"Our children played in the storm/We gave them life, they gave us heaven/Laughter in the rain" --"Ca C'est Bon"

"Please walk me down the aisle/We'll have a bunch of those happy fat childs" --"Goin' Back to Ponchatoula"

"On the steps of 'Cre-Coeur/Holding hands with a little girl/I just had to ask who you were./'Oh, that's Marianne and Livia/She takes her everywhere she goes/Her sister just adores her.'" --"Marianne"

4. One interesting and less obvious thread I noticed in Ca C'est Bon! is the theme of names, and the importance of names. There's a whole song about someone's name being changed and what that means ("Lily Mae"), and a couple times, marriage is referenced by talking about the woman taking the man's name. The importance of names is something I don't think about very often as being a Catholic/Christian thing, but it really is. It comes up a lot in the Bible. The Davidic line comes from the son of Noah who was named Shem, which means "name". When the Tower of Babel is being built, those building it say "come, let us make a name [Shem] for ourselves", instead of accepting the name God has given them.
There are also many other moments especially in prophecy about names, such as "I have called you by name...you are Mine". Calling someone by name is important, because the name has a lot to do with who someone is (especially in the Old Testament, where names often had important meanings), and speaks to a certain familiarity. So, I thought that it was neat that either intentionally or unintentionally, L'Angelus used that in their music.

Le Examples: 

"So I left my home behind me/To go out and make a name/But baby, now you know I see/Your name is the only one for me" --"Goin' Back to Ponchatoula"

"Twelve years old today/They've gone and changed your name/To something sophisticated" --"Lily Mae"

"Gone with your smile and your name/My lovely Lily Mae" --"Lily Mae"

"I brought you here to the steps where I first learned your name.../Will you take my name?" --"Marianne" (I am TRASH for this song. This lyric is the thing that brings me to the brink of tears consistently.)

5. There are tiny touches of everyday Catholic/Christian life in several of their songs. Little tiny things that most people wouldn't notice, but which jump out at someone immersed in that culture. 

For instance:

"Wish I could bring you back today/Hear you sing that sweet 'Ave'" --"Lily Mae" (referring to the Ave Maria, a prayer/song very important to Catholic culture)

"On the steps of 'Cre-Coeur" --"Marianne" (I think this is the Cajun-ization of Sacre-Coeur, meaning Sacred Heart, referring to a church.)

The entire "Waltz of the Sorrowful Mysteries", which from the outside just sounds like a nice slow waltz in French, but which is actually the Hail Mary (aka Ave Maria) in French. 

The "Waltz of St. Cecilia", which seems like it could refer to a Cajun waltz, but which is also named after, well, St. Cecilia, patron saint of musicians.

"Oh my lover, you know I'm so sorry/I haven't kept that promise that I made." --"River Road" (referencing wedding vows)

"It don't matter where you've been/And it don't matter how you sinned/The door is still wide open/And you're free to come back in." --"Love Don't Care" (Somewhat of a reference to the Prodigal Son, as well as God's forgiveness...this whole song is a Christian view of love and forgiveness.)

6. They have a very Wendell Berrian sense of place. The group itself moved back to Louisiana to be close to their musical roots. Many of their songs emphasize rootedness, or moving back to one's home, where one belongs. They reference places very specifically in their work (Ponchatoula, Plaquemines, &c), emphasizing that they're singing about their home. And because they're at home, and not moving around, they really can write about things which concern "the man in the cabbage field".

Examples (of emphasis on rootedness and sense of place...there are too many examples of things for the man in the cabbage field to list!):

"I'm sorry I did wrong/But my heart's already gone/Back to Ponchatoula" --"Goin' Back to Ponchatoula"

"Where did you go Lily Mae/Dancing through the summer days/Barefoot in the bluegrass, singing/High in the holler'" --"Lily Mae"

"Just three years ago today/And I've brought you here/Back to the steps where I first learned your name.../This old church has stayed the same/Waiting here for us" --"Marianne"

"But all these years we've loved so long/Beside this river, flowing wide" --"River Road"

7. They're overall artists-who-are-Catholic, not Catholics-who-make-art. I know I said in the series kickoff post that that's the highest compliment I could give to a Catholic artist, and I think it's merited here. L'Angelus takes joy in their art, makes sure to have an orthodox view of marriage, weaves in little Catholic references, and has Catholic themes throughout, but neither of the albums that I've listened to scream "THIS IS A CATHOLIC GROUP." They wear Miraculous Medals when they perform; but they also cover popular songs. One could listen to their albums and not realize they were a Catholic group, as I did for many years. Almost none of their songs seem specifically Catholic at first listen, although they are incredibly good music. But the Catholic themes are there. They have fun making music together as a family--and the music they make happens to be Catholic music deep down, because they are musicians-who-are-Catholic. I was listening to their music again for the first time in years, and thought to myself "This group makes me proud to be Catholic."

8. I know I've referenced this song at least once or twice, as the exception to the rule that their music doesn't sound specifically Catholic at first listen, so I wanted to talk about it for a minute. "This song" would be "Desperation War", one of the many songs that tells a story on Ca C'est Bon!, and the one which tells probably the most specific story. I suggest you listen to it (hence why I've embedded it). But since I'm sure some of you are going to be rebels and not listen to it...the basic plot: it's about a girl named Shelley, who turns away from God when her father, who was her primary teacher about Him, dies when she's seventeen. She lives the promiscuous party life as a way to try to cover up her deep sadness and emptiness. 

"I won't have to think those big thoughts anymore"

At the end of the song, she has a dream about someone who is only ever referred to as a "young man", who shows her the love she's been missing all along, and who, to the believer, is obviously Jesus. The end of the song is her desperate cry to God for help. 

I've been of two minds about this song for the time this post has been fermenting in my mind. Because on the one hand, some of the awesomeness of L'Angelus is that in their two "secular" albums, the ones I listen to most, they don't really reference Catholicism, even if it's implied in small references and their themes. It makes it listen-to-able for non-Catholics and even non-Christians, who can see the truth-beauty-goodness inherent in it, and thus might be able to get their "imaginations baptized" just a little, to reference Lewis. But on the other hand, I think this song could speak to many of the people in the culture, who are living the life Shelley lives for much of the song, and since it doesn't end on a feel-good note, instead, a desperate cry for help, it might be accepted not as proselytizing but as art that truly shows fallen human nature. 

While this song is the most obviously Christian (Catholic, I'd infer, by the reference to Shelley going to "St. Mary's"), that doesn't stop it from being gritty and real. There's no holding back of what the "party life" is like, and why Shelley is living it. (That said, it's not inappropriate. I listened to it all the time as a small child. XD) 

The part that hit me in the back of the throat this summer when I was re-listening to it for the first time in years was 

"The beers and the men they'd get her from tonight until tomorrow"

I'm not sure if it's just from living at college for a year and seeing so many people like this, or because I've had similar experiences with reading in the past (for me, it would be "reading like a maniac will get her from tonight until tomorrow", which really doesn't scan as well), but that hits hard. It's not an elaborate line, but it conveys the feeling of despair that one must be feeling to need that kind of distraction to get through the night. To the next day, upon which one will need it again. And I think that's part of why I think this song belongs on the CD, even though it is specifically Catholic. Because there are so many people in the culture who feel this way about the life they're living. 

"Shelley, laughing on the bar stool, never could understand why/Everything's s'posed to feel good, still she wanted to cry/Something's missing, what am I searching for?/God, I just don't know anymore!" 

And even if they don't accept the premise that God might be the answer (and the end of the song ends with Shelley's cry for help from God, not with any answer for her yet), perhaps knowing that they're not alone in their emptiness could help? And for those who have never experienced that kind of emptiness, it can bring empathy instead of judgement for those living the party life. I know I need that...it's hard to see everyone going out on Friday night with barely any clothes on and not get judgy. 

Them's my (slightly conflicted) thoughts on "Desperation War". 

There you go! L'Angelus, analyzed! (Well, mostly. I'm sure there are more things I could talk about...as if eight bullet points wasn't more than enough!) One thing I wanted to note is that while I embedded a bunch of their songs in this post, I didn't even get close to including all of the songs on either of my favorite albums, so if you enjoyed the songs I embedded--go find the albums! So...go ye forth and enjoy L'Angelus! ;)

Have you ever heard of L'Angelus? Which was your favorite song or lyric in this post? Do you have a favorite musical group or artists who is an artist-who-is-Catholic (or Christian) rather than Catholic (or Christian)-who-makes-art?