Probably the fastest growing, but most under-the-radar genre of popular song today is the secular hymn.  This may be because, although church attendance has been on a steady decline for the last forty years or so, society’s need for gospel-like songs has never been greater.

How else do you account for the popularity and prestige of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah? 

When it was first released in 1984, the song hardly made a ripple.  At last count, Hallelujah has been covered by over 300 artists and is the go-to song for adding emotional gravitas to everything from award show ceremonies to animated movie soundtracks.  It’s been hailed as “the quintessential secular hymn.”

But I think it’s high time for Hallelujah to step aside.  It’s a fine song, don’t get me wrong.  But it’s played out, and quite frankly, on closer inspection, it’s not the life affirming, feel-good ditty people make it out to be.

For my money, the quintessential secular hymn was released by singer-songwriter Justin Baker in 2023.  Once More with Feeling closes out Baker’s sophomore album, Ornamental Monsters, and it’s as uplifting a song as anything (secular or sacred) I’ve ever heard.  Accompanying Baker’s affecting lead vocals are an organ, synth strings, and two backing vocalists who seem like a full church choir.  Once More with Feeling is a lot like a traditional gospel hymn, but with one not-so-slight difference.  Its lyrics are a celebration of humanism- not the divine.

I was trying to disappear
Become like the wind, the rain, the sky
I was trying on every fear
Searching for answers, lost in the night

Just to make sure that the church organ sound hasn’t lulled listeners into thinking Once More with Feeling is a long-lost Martin Luther or Jars of Clay number, at about its midway point, Baker drops the hammer.  The song samples an oratory from atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell’s essay A Free Man’s Worship.  Like Buddha with his four noble truths and eightfold path, Russell succinctly sums up in the sample his philosophy of life and lays out a humanistic path to prevailing over its inevitable suffering.

It’s a powerful passage, one that sets Baker’s work apart.  Not that it’s a competition, but as secular hymns go, Once More with Feeling leaves Hallelujah in the dust.  Sorry Leonard.

Cohen and Baker actually share a fair number of similarities – aside from each writing “the quintessential secular hymn.”  They both first achieved success as published poets before turning their attentions to songwriting.  They each have an underrated gift for melody, and although their voices have a limited range, they make the most of them by crafting songs where this otherwise liability is a strength.

Baker’s music, however, explores a much wider range of styles and genres.  Ornamental Monsters seamlessly runs the gamut from bluegrass to blue-eyed soul, folk to jazz, and blues to gospel.  In the hands of a lesser artist, transitions like these would be jarring.  But Baker’s skilled arrangements and sequencing ensure that the album’s nine songs (all originals) play nice.

With this varied approach to songwriting combined with sophisticated lyrics and first-rate musicianship, Baker has created a compelling work with Ornamental Monsters.  It’s rare that an album so ambitious succeeds so thoroughly.  It’s even rarer when the artist is local with a demanding day job and modest musical ambitions.

Baker is a native Marylander, who spent his formative years in Glen Burnie and Annapolis.  He grew up in a household filled with church music and the sounds of WPOC, Baltimore’s country radio station.  “In the Southern Baptist Church,” he said, “music is so much a part of the experience.  I can still remember feeling emotionally overwhelmed singing That Old Rugged Cross.”

He didn’t pick up the guitar until he was fifteen and found a 1974 Ibanez dreadnought collecting dust in the basement.  It was a long-forgotten gift from his mother to his father.  “A trip to the local music store for Black Diamond strings, and the journey began,” Baker writes on his website. Almost immediately, his musical world exploded.

“In retrospect, I think I came of age at a great time for music,” Baker said.  “Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains.  Those were great bands.  Wu-Tang Clan is phenomenal.”  He listened to the classics of the previous generation, too.  Baker said that “discovering Bob Dylan was like an act of rebellion.”

Baker attended Towson University, where he formed a band with fellow students Josh Kaufman, Jason Seger, and Reno Brown.  Ten Stories Tall had some success.  They released a CD and had gigs at The Recher and other venues in the region.  “We played some great shows,” Baker said.  “But once college was over, it was tough to keep the thing going.”

Fifteen years passed between the Ten Stories Tall album and Baker’s first solo release, 2021’s Buyer’s Remorse.  During that time, his artistic attention turned to getting his poetry published and writing the next great American novel.  But when his wife became pregnant with their first child, Baker decided to pick up his guitar and write a song for her as a gift (he called it a “push present”) to commemorate the occasion.

The result, Write Me a Love Song, is sweet and honest and endearing and one of the many highlights of Ornamental Monsters.

She said, “Write me a love song not one of those sad songs you always sing
We just had us a baby, and we shouldn’t dwell on them things:
Grown men whining ‘bout bad times in drunken rhymes, lover’s crimes, and blue eyes crying in the rain
Just tell me you love me and that you’ll hold me through all of life’s pains.”

The experience reawakened Baker’s passion for songwriting.  He wrote of it, “The mystical feeling of melody turning into language turning into song was intoxicating.”  The novel and poems soon took a backseat to the music, where they still sit today.  As Baker describes it, “One song bred two more and pretty soon I had a pile of songs I could hang my hat on.”

Baker’s style as a lyricist is best described as “character driven.”  With just a few verses, he’s able to paint rich portraits of complex people, warts and all, who find themselves in situations we can all relate to or may have even been in.  Though the characters in Ornamental Monsters are sometimes deeply flawed, they’re still people you wouldn’t mind getting to know better over a bourbon neat or repeated song listens.

Baker said about his songwriting, “I love to inhabit the mental space of other people.  I imagine different scenarios.  It’s like the Scorsese approach to songwriting.  Everything is a character study.”

There’s no better example of the “Scorsese approach to songwriting” on Ornamental Monsters than Hermès Scarf, the breakout single.  It’s a retro, blue-eyed soul style rocker that could easily find its way on multiple Spotify playlists.  It’s also a romantic but honest viewpoint of a weathered relationship by one of the partners.

You wear your sin in chains around your neck
And tattooed over scars on your left wrist
Let’s count the ways you hide behind
That Hermès scarf you bought with last month’s rent

It took a year, from November 2022 to November 2023, to record the songs that would eventually become Ornamental Monsters.  Baker worked closely with the renowned producer, recording engineer, and keyboardist Tony Correlli, who co-produced the album at his Deep End Studios in Middle River.  “The beauty of having such a long time between recording sessions is that I had a couple of weeks or more to think about the arrangements,” Baker said.

It was time well spent.  The song arrangements and instrumentation on Ornamental Monsters are striking.  Reviews of the album have focused on the quality of the lyrics, and rightly so.  But we wouldn’t even be contemplating the album’s lyrics if the playing, singing, and production weren’t so strong.

Some of the standout instrumental flourishes include the trumpet work of Peter Lander; Jason Seger on guitar; Dallas Jacobs on banjo; Eric Leikus on pedal steel; John Grant on electric lead guitar; Emily Easterly on drums; and the keyboard work of Tony Correlli throughout the album.  The backing vocals of Alex DeWeese and Lily Malkus are outstanding, too, especially on the prelude to Blockader’s Prayer.

Baker doesn’t expect that the album’s success will afford him the opportunity to leave his job as a high school English teacher.  Not that he would.  Even if Taylor Swift performed Hermès Scarf at the next Super Bowl halftime show, Baker would probably still be standing in front of a classroom the next morning sharing his love of the written word with his students.

For the working songwriter, Leonard Cohen once mused, “There are no rewards other than the work itself.”  And for Justin Baker, the work itself is more than enough.

More information about Justin Baker is available at his website:  justinbakermusic.net

Ornamental Monsters and Buyer’s Remorse are available on Bandcamp:  https://justinwbaker.bandcamp.com/