Delirious? rocks with praise as purpose

Christian rock radio doesn’t necessarily weigh on the minds of secular music lovers.

It’s huge for its target audience, but for many outside that group, purely Christian rock is just there – inoffensive, sonically safe and out of the popular spotlight.

Not so for Delirious?, the Christian alt-rock band that broke into the mainstream in the late ‘90s, and will rock Real Life Ministries Pavilion, 1866 Cecil Road, Post Falls, on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

Delirious? – singer Martin Smith, guitarist Stu Garrard, drummer Stew Smith, bassist Jon Thatcher and keyboardist Tim Jupp – made its mark as a religious rock group with loud guitars, poppy hooks and deliberate lyrics promoting its brand of spirituality.

It also became known as the band with the question mark.

That distinctive, peculiar piece of punctuation gives the band an edge, but when asked what deeper meaning it represents, Jupp’s reply, well, lacks a certain something.

“That’s a really good question, which really has no answer,” Jupp said from his home in England on Monday morning during a break from touring. “There’s no spiritual connotation. You could make one up if you like.”

For a band with song titles including “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” and “Majesty (Here I Am),” it seems out of character to have a name sans spiritual meaning.

But Delirious? is not quite a conventional Christian band. Stylewise, it borrows heavily from overseas über-groups Radiohead, Coldplay and U2 and, unlike now-defunct Creed, the band doesn’t render its Christian message unrecognizable with vague metaphors specifically crafted for mainstream popularity.

Smith and Co. achieved its success – including play on MTV, MTV2, VH1 and mainstream rock radio, and a gold record for its 1997 debut, “Cutting Edge” – by doing something radically different from their mainstream religious rock peers: They offered a God-centric message written with watery clarity.

“Some of the best songs are the ones written from the heart,” Jupp said. “I think that’s important, that we write songs that reflect who we are.”

The band currently is busy writing lyrics for its new material. It also has rocked Germany, Morocco and the Netherlands thus far in May.

Wait, back up – Christian rock in Morocco?

“It was a gig where I don’t think anybody knew us, nobody knew the music,” Jupp said. “I imagine (for) a lot of those people, it’s the first time they’ve heard Western rock bands in a live setting.

“Yeah, we rocked the Casbah.”

Though Morocco wasn’t like playing to arm-waving hordes in Western Europe and North America, Delirious? wants to spread its message to new places.

The title of the band’s most recent album, 2003’s “World Service,” is a testament to the band’s mission, evident in its support of world charity organizations such as hopeHIV, which helps orphans of African AIDS casualties. This year’s tour also will hit 20 countries.

“You get to realize that the world is such a huge place,” Jupp said. “We want to take the music to as many different places as possible.”

Yes, even places without Christian rock radio.