With their third release The Opulent Hum, Screwtape Lewis sheds its art-rock excesses in favor of an urgent yet elegant sound that follows the traditions of Bowie, Costello, and the Clash. All under the direction of the Northern Pikes Jay Semko.

The Edmonton Journal calls them "a prairie pop oddity...mixing David Bowie sci-fi, cabaret organs, new wave disco, Offspring punk and Hawksley Workman vocals...rather brilliant"

Edmonton Sun - December 21, 2005

Oh Ye of Little Faith Edmonton Sun 12.21.05 by Mike Ross Screwtape Lewis front man refutes Christian rock tag It's not often that you hear about a "former Christian rocker". Usually we focus on musicians who have found God, rather than those who have lost them. Most of them don't bother to look in the first place. Try under the couch. Randl Lewis Bailer front man of the local band Screwtape Lewis -playing tonight at the Urban Lounge- says he feels like an expatriate. "I feel like the soldier who went to Vietnam, ready to lay it on the line for my country and then got over there and didn't know what the hell it was all about. You come back and you don't really know what happened to you. I don't profess to any Christian ideals anymore." Repent ye backslider! The singer says his personal anti-epiphany came from my own curt Edmonton Sun review of his early 90's band Reckless Faith. He can still quote it: "Christian rock gives me the creeps". He's just kidding. The band didn't quit then and was in fact rather miffed with the review, but at some point in the course of rocking for Jesus, Bailer started to get the creeps too. He continues, "We had a little label deal, toured in the US, some hits, we were doing ok for that genre. Basically it was a combination of things. I didn't relate with the kids that were coming out to our shows, for the most part, and then the record company started pressuring me into writing basically Christian commercials. That's not why I got into it to begin with. I always had way more questions than I had answers for, and I thought that I had a better opportunity in this market with that point of view than I did playing the hard boiled Alberta bar scene. But I learned after a few years that the Christian music scene wasn't the place for me." Besides, a real Christian rock band probably wouldn't get away with writing songs like (this is not a) Queer Agenda, as can be heard on Screwtape Lewis' new album The Opulent Hum. The song grapples with several issues- typical of the band's fairly rich, involved music (the band was once cited as "too weird" for the Urban Lounge)-one of them being homophobia. As a high school art teacher based in Wetaskiwin, pretty good as day jobs go, Bailer says he finds high school boys to be the biggest homophobic group in the world. There's also a line in the song courtesy of his mom" "Did I raise boys or did I raise girls?" uttered in response to her son mentioning one day that he had to do some laundry. Bailer was raised in a farmer's household where men were men and women did the laundry. Needless to say young Randl's decision to go into the arts irked the old man. "My dad thought it was a complete and total waste of time," he recalls. "That's not what a man does. There's three generations of farmers here. Then I come along and disappointingly, I'm just not interested. I don't feel like it's anything that I chose. I just was always interested in other things. I was interested in music very early on. By the third grade I was already starting to buy LPs. I thought it was a very normal thing, but I found out that other kids weren't really doing that. Records were really big to me. When I started to get into KISS and Queen and heavily conceptualized groups at the time, it was like getting into a whole new world. That was my escapism. Had I been born 20 years later, it probably would have been the Lord of the Rings and PS2, but we obviously didn't have that kind of stuff." Bailer, now 36, gravitated into Christian music after a close friend died. His post Christian music in Screwtape Lewis started out as highly "conceptualized" , and there's that word again, eventually becoming as much about the multi-media stage show as the songs. He says he felt the need to backslide there, too, with the feeling that "maybe we need to simplify things a little bit," he says. "It sounds ridiculous to say, 'well this CD was more about the music.' But in a way it is." Perhaps Screwtape Lewis is more evidence that when anything comes before rock in a rock band, the rock can suffer. Christian rock or conceptualized art rock, it doesn't matter.

Red Deer Express - August 31, 2005

New territory for Screwtape Lewis Red Deer Express 08.31.05 A trek into the Christian music world didn??t cut it for an Edmonton set of rockers ?? now relishing freedoms sometimes unfamiliar in that rather confined environment. Screwtape Lewis plays The Vat Sept. 8. For fans of legendary author C.S. Lewis, the band??s moniker will immediately click. Lewis penned The Screwtape Letters ?? a dialogue between a senior and junior devil about how to lead humans astray. It??s a masterpiece of imagination and insight ?? packed with themes that resonated sharply with frontman and principal songwriter Randl Lewis Bailer years back when his own spiritual quest was launched. ??The book was so misunderstood when it came out and I really related to that,?? he recalls. ??The name was chosen out of sheer novelty ?? it??s just a bizarre combination of words. But it kind of clung to my psyche for years.?? Bailer discovered Christian faith after losing a close friend weeks before graduation. His songwriting promptly took on weightier spiritual themes ?? and caught the attention of an independent Christian record label. Despite two top 40 hits and Canadian/U.S./European tours, Bailer (with drummer Boris T. Blackwood) resisted pressure to write what he deemed ??not songs but Christian commercials. ??I certainly never went out of my way to join a subculture,?? he says. ??To take ourselves out of it was alienating ?? it??s very much a community and once you??re out, you??re out. We really had to start over.?? Today, Screwtape Lewis includes keyboardist/vocalist David Shepherd and bassist/vocalist Wax Davis. For these guys, re-invention is a constant. Genres ranging from new wave, cabaret, punk to soundtrack and rock meld with impeccable songwriting. Their first disc, Art Rock Show, was released in 2001. ??The goal for us with our first disc was to be as unique, original and non-commercial as we could possibly be.?? Continuing the imaginative journey, Better. Stronger. Faster followed in 2003. Their latest disc, The Opulent Hum, reflects their consistently cohesive sound. Produced by Jay Semko (The Northern Pikes), the tunes were recorded live-off-the-floor in a mere seven days. The whirlwind recording captures the spirit of what best reflects the nature of Screwtape Lewis. ??We really pride ourselves on being a live band,?? says Bailer. ??The technology of today can make anyone have a great-sounding record. ??But there are people who think music is losing something because it??s too perfect.?? Fans are loving the results of a striking, solid collaboration. ??Response has been really favourable,?? says a grateful Bailer. ??There is such a focus on songwriting.?? The early days of trying to pen formulaic tunes are memories, and he can??t imagine it being any other way. ??For me, the most important thing is not to be able to make a living at music,?? says Bailer, who teaches art at an Edmonton high school. ??I would rather write for myself, do things on a smaller level and do things I would rather do.?? Mark Weber