“Captain of My Heart” celebrates faith, conjures 70’s pop favorites

Posted on February 4, 2008 in Entertainment by DM

tim cooper album cover art Recently in my day job, I happened to meet Tim Cooper, the A-V guru for the Iowa Events Center. Tim mentioned he was a musician with a page on MySpace. I clicked through, and turns out Tim writes, performs and produces original praise-and-worship music.

Now I am vaguely aware that today’s Christian music sounds a lot different from traditional gospel or hymns, but “praise and worship” is not a category I normally listen to. Still, Tim’s MySpace page included several sample cuts from his latest CD, “Captain of My Heart,” released in late 2007. After sampling them, I took an enthusiastic trip over to CD Baby to purchase the full disc.

I really, really like this CD. Overall, the disc proclaims faith loud and clear, but the mood is joyful and celebratory rather than preachy. Several of the tracks here remind me so much of that wonderful in-between 70’s pop period, after psychedelia but before disco, when KIOA played Badfinger, Dobie Gray, Edgar Winter (is “Free Ride” not the best faith-rock song ever??), Ringo Starr’s “Rotograveure” singles, and even the largely forgotten Gilbert O’Sullivan (whose “Alone Again Naturally” remains one of my all-time favorites).

Tim’s talent lies in blending spiritual-themed lyrics with memorable pop hooks, resulting in a light-handed reinforcement of the intended Christian message while still allowing for some rockin’ (and slightly fuzzed) guitar work and T-Rex-style percussion. This is, quite frankly, why the disc works so well for me - it celebrates how Tim feels without telling me how I should feel, and does so in a musically unexpected way. That it also happens to recall for me one of the happiest eras of rock/pop history makes it even better.

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