"Do you know what I mean when I say, 'I don't want to be alone'?"
Yeah, it's a Christian song talking about how hard life can be and how letting yourself drown can sometimes seem to be. ("Now all the demons look like prophets and I'm living out / Every word they speak".) The song narrator is clutching life—er, well, his friends' good company—by his fingertips. The danger comes when he's alone, and he clings to company to avoid it. Staying alive takes "Work".
The band Jars of Clay produces surprisingly good music, considering they're part of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Okay, the acoustic guitar-based rock starts to sound kinda same ol', same ol' after the first album or two. The tempo in and style of "Work" seems a bit of a compromise between the heavier rock of The Eleventh Hour and the soothing tones of other albums.
(Caveat here: I only own all their albums through The Eleventh Hour, including the original Christmas one they did, so most of my exposure comes from the first five CDs. They've had five since. But I think it may say something that this song from CD #9 resembles #1–5.)
Dan Haseltine's voice soothes and melds well with the well-mixed music. Still, the lyrics get a bit overrepetitive with the nearly-continuous "what I mean when I say, 'I don't want to be alone'?"
The music video is also a bit creepy. The band performs the song—eeek, and I thought Nightwish looked weird—while the room's filling up with water. Right at the end, the room's full.
Er… points for symbolism, but not very memorable scenery. At least, not memorable for me. To be fair, I have been reading vampire novels this week (Eclipse and Sunshine) and am writing another (fine, so it's more werewolf than vampire), so maybe my creepiness tolerance has spiked enough that this video isn't making much of an impression.
Lyrics: 3/5
Music: 4/5
Vocal(s): 4/5
Overall: 7/10
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