Quiet music, mostly with acoustic guitars. A frail-voiced singer. Very strong Christian themes and subjects. Songs peppered with the words joy, celebration and love.

The ingredients of The Innocence Mission are ones that should add up to something unbearably precious, and I don’t doubt for a second that there are people that couldn’t distinguish between The Innocence Mission and a campfire singing of Kumbaya. But the frailty of Karin Peris’s voice and the sparse backing create something to me that’s gorgeously sad, giving the songs an emotional weight much greater than the sum of their parts.

I didn’t get into TIM until their 1995 album Glow, an album that saw them take that era’s popular path of reverb and vibratoed production, sounding a lot like The Sundays. Yet somehow, they still got lazily lumped in with Sarah MacLachlan and Natalie Merchant, when their sound’s sharp sadness gave it a cold quality that distances it far from the Pollyanna sound of the Lilith Fair set.

In short, they may lack the freak of todays folk, but their sparse, bleak sound belies the joyousness of their lyrics, giving them more of an edge than they’re ever given credit for. It’s beautiful stuff. Check it:

“I Hear You Say So” (1995)
find it on Glow

The final song on the record, this is more folky than the rest of Glow, but it’s my favorite track on the record, and the ultimate example of how Karen Peris’s voice can render ringing acoustic strums and joyous lyrics sad.

“The Lakes of Canada” (1999)
find it on Birds Of My Neighborhood

When I had this song on repeat in the winter of 99-2000, I had to force myself to take it off, realizing that it was wrapping me in melancholy. This is the coldest song TIM’s catalog, and the normal celebrations of the lyrics are replaced with defiance and frustration. The middle section’s pleading repetition of “give me another day…I feel that I could change” is impossibly gorgeous…and almost unbearably sad.

“Small Planes” (2001)
find it on Small Planes

One of TIM’s most conventional, most hymn-like melodies, but once again, the sparse, sharp guitars and Peris’s fragile vocals keep a chill on it that keeps it from ever sounding conventional.

“Spring” (2010)
find it on My Room In The Trees

My first reaction to The Innocence Mission’s new album was exactly the same as it was to all their albums: “Yup. Sounds like the Innocence Mission.” But just as with all of their albums, the quality came through with repeated listenings, and then the realization that it’s a warmer, string-soaked sound than their past work. The beautiful “Spring” is the standout here, highlighting another great addition to The Innocence Mission’s catalog, and a must for anyone that the sound resonates with.