At the time, Justin had already made some indie releases for the local Mormon contemporary market, and he was starting to become well-known for his ability as a singer and an actor. As expected, the band rocked the house, and if I remember correctly, they won first place.
I had a chat with Justin after the show and congratulated him on his work. Justin and I had attended the same high school in the mid 90s, and though I didn't know him very well, we knew a lot of the same people. In fact his first band, Almost August, featured some of the same personnel who played in my sister's band, Euphoria. Justin seemed pleased to talk to somebody who remembered him from high school, and after we caught up on a few things, he gave me the URL for his website where he later posted some demos for his upcoming album. One of them was "Shades of Gray", and the other was an acoustic demo called "This Time".
Well, a decade has passed since then, and I finally got ahold of Justin's first nationally distributed album, which came out in 2005 and is entitled "Runaway". My apologies for taking so long, but my to-buy list gets ever longer and my music budget gets ever smaller. Justin has since released a follow-up CD entitled "Nothing This Real", but this review will focus on the first of the two.
Despite our shared roots, Justin Utley's path has diverged significantly from my own. We both moved hundreds of miles away from our hometown in Utah, but the similarities end there. Justin relocated to the fast-paced east-coast world of New York City, spending his nights in front of a microphone and singing rock and roll to a steadily growing number of fans in pubs and clubs. I, on the other hand, ended up in the quiet, cotton farming bible belt town of Lubbock, Texas, spending my nights in front of a microscope, and singing little more than lullabies to a steadily growing number of small children. Our paths could not be more different.
Some years ago when I first found out that Justin had come out as a homosexual and left the LDS church, I didn't know what to think. It came as a big shock, but it was actually more of a shock to to me hear that he had chosen to leave the church, than it was to hear that he was gay. I wondered how someone who had sung so many faith-inspiring songs in his career could decide to quit the church like that.
Since then, with both the church and the gay community getting a lot of attention in the press, I've read a lot of articles and opinions, and I've come to understand a little bit more about some of the internal and external conflicts that face homosexuals in the LDS church. And since Justin Utley is an artist who sings from the heart, some of those conflicts show through in this album.
But back to the music. Overall, the most noticeable thing about "Runaway" is Justin's singing. He's got a great voice and conveys a tremendous amount of feeling, and makes excellent use of subtle nuances in his vocal delivery to add power and emphasis to his words, but without letting the style overwhelm the message. The production is very clean and modern, without being too over-produced.
The lyrics, too, are packed with layers of meaning, and though I can't make them all out exactly (the Amazon MP3 edition doesn't come with a lyric sheet) I can tell that Justin is speaking his mind.
The album's opening track, "Room to Breathe" kicks off the album with a syncopated beat, a very pop sound mixed with rock guitars. The words to the song convey a feeling of struggle and it's easy to guess that it probably has to do with Justin's experiences with the church. The song sets the tone for an album that conveys a multitude of feelings through the course of the tracklist.
The next song, "Goodbye, Goodbye", has a similar beat to the opening track, energetic and radio-friendly, with some ambiguity to the lyrics-- is it about Justin's relationship with the church, or about a personal relationship, or both? To the average listener it won't matter; it's a good song no matter what it is about.
The album slows down a bit for the next track --"Little White Lies", which has a bit more bluesey feel to it. Then the pop beat returns for title track, "Runaway", which continues with the overall lyrical theme of personal struggle. "Crash & Burn" is a slightly more laid back, acoustic-based track with an arrangement and delivery that emphasizes the highs and lows in the lyrical subject matter.
With the next song, "Let Me Go", from the drum intro at the start it is easy to tell this song has more of a "classic rock" beat compared to the radio-oriented pop of the earlier tracks, that fits the lyrics well with a good dose of percussion and electric guitar riffs, but still restrained enough to keep the attention of the listener where it belongs on the vocals. This is followed up by "Hold you", another high-energy rock track.
Things cool down again for the next song, "Missing you now" which returns to a more mid-tempo pop sound with the same sort of radio-friendly feel of the opening tracks. If "This Time" had been included on this CD instead of the next one, this would have been a good place in the track order for it.
Next comes "Shades of Gray". To my ears, this recording sounds identical to the 2002 demo that Justin had posted for download all those years ago, remastered perhaps, but showing no obvious signs of re-recording or re-mixing. Which is okay, since it had a very polished sound to begin with. Although there is a slight noticeable difference in arrangement and style from the more recent songs, it would not be obvious to the average listener who isn't aware that it was recorded years before the others. Perhaps because of its origin as part of a band project, this song out of all of them also has the most "rock band" sound to it as opposed to the solo popsinger-songwriter aspect of the rest of the album.
When I first heard this song live, I didn't have a clue what it was about. All I knew was it was a great song, and that Justin had assembled an awesome band around him to play it. But all these years later in retrospect, some of the words suddenly become crystal clear, and I can get a pretty good idea of what kind of internal struggles Justin was dealing with. I don't pretend to understand all of it, but I can imagine some of what he must have been feeling and empathize with it. I can't say if I would have made the same choices in his place, because I'm not him. But songs like this give at least a glimpse into where Justin is coming from. After all, don't we all have our own "shades of gray" to deal with?
The album closes out with "The Apology (Wherever You Are)". It is a simple track with just piano and vocals. I can't make out 100% of the lyrics, but it sounds to me like this song is almost a farewell to Justin's former life and existence in the Mormon church, looking back at his past and seeking reconciliation with the present. When I heard the simple melody and arrangement, an old memory was awakened, and in my mind I was transported back to an LDS seminary classroom in our hometown of Magna, Utah over 15 years ago, where I saw Justin give a solo performance of one of his church-oriented songs for his classmates. The piano that day was so loud I couldn't understand a word he was singing, but I could tell he was putting his heart and soul into it, and I knew that it had to be about something that had deep meaning and importance to him.
Now with this album Runaway, I can tell that Justin continues to put his heart and soul into his music, in a well-produced and excellent sounding record with powerful lyrics and strong commercial appeal.
It was an interesting experience to review this album, and I feel simultaneously like both an insider and an outsider. An insider because I knew Justin and his early work when we were growing up, and an outsider because he now plays to a different crowd, as part of a community that I'm not well-acquainted with, whose political and social belief system is vastly different, and at times diametrically opposed, to my own. But despite these differences, I wish Justin good luck and professional success in the future. Perhaps our diverging paths will cross again someday.
