The Beautiful Letdown, Switchfoot's fourth album, is quite possibly the closest thing to a "perfect" album I've ever heard. Their last album, Learning to Breathe, was fantastic, but they've managed to top even that stellar achievement. With production by John Fields of Andrew WK and Semisonic fame, who gives the group a more focused sound than ever before, Switchfoot sticks to its familiar formula of not subscribing to any one particular sound, but allowing the music to fulfill the needs of whatever song is at hand. This method has served them well in the past, but this time, it approaches a level of craftsmanship that towers above anything the group has ever done.

Based on the quality of his work on Letdown, Jon Foreman is henceforth to be known as nothing less than a songwriting genius. He focuses this time on songs about examining the status of your life, where you're at, and what you want out of life. On "This Is Your Life" he asks, "This is your life / Are you who you want to be?", while the title track draws an incredibly powerful portrait of someone who has "crashed and burned" and found the sole truth of their existence in the power of redemption. Other songs remind us that life is short (the amusing, bouncy "Gone"), all of life's problems can usually be traced to a human source (the killer rock anthem, "Ammunition"), and our perspectives are always in a constant state of change, based on our life experiences ("24").

Every once in a while an album comes along that absolutely staggers you with its depth and artistry, challenging your entire perspective on the world. It's an album that you can't listen to without being moved so profoundly that you will never be the same after you've heard it. I can count how many times that's ever happened to me on just one hand.

The Beautiful Letdown is one of those albums.

- Robin Parrish