When listening to The City Harmonic, you instinctively turn up the volume and join the chorus as the music dynamically bounces from sparse intimacy to soaring celebration and back again. It’s a musical metaphor for the band that plays it—with their feet in the dirt and their eyes toward the heavens. It isn’t long before you find yourself singing along and not because you ought to, but because you want to. Like a spontaneous outbreak of “Hey Jude” around the campfire, you want in on the moment. And getting people in on the act—hearts pounding and feet moving—is at the core of what The City Harmonic is about.

The Canadian band’s six-song EP debut, Introducing The City Harmonic, is a nostalgic Brit-pop meets campfire sing-along mix that features raucous, gang vocals along with agile, soaring anthems crafted to include the listener.

The band, consisting of frontman Elias Dummer, bassist Eric Fusilier, guitarist Aaron Powell and drummer Josh Vanderlaan, isn’t as interested in finding fans as they are looking for participants in the journey.

“Both art and worship are participatory acts—not consumptive acts,” says Elias. “What is meaningful for people is the experience, that creative moment when art is shared. To us, it’s almost as though these songs just don't sound right without everybody involved.”

The City Harmonic is what you get when you mix a rock band with sweeping symphonies, captivating anthem-like choruses, concert hall orchestras, Brit-rock influence, scripturally rooted lyrics, and that singing-round-the-campfire-feeling. And ‘what you get’ on their 6 song EP, Introducing The City Harmonic, is nothing like your typical idea of worship band.

Once you hear The City Harmonic for yourself, you’ll feel what the buzz is all about. Instantly addicting, they express profound truth and worship in simple and musically creative ways that will resonate with real people. I got the great opportunity to interview Elias Dummer about his original worship song, “Manifesto.” Here are the answers to the questions I asked Elias.

Please tell me about the background in writing the song “Manifesto.”

Our writing process might be a little different than most worship artists. We always start by writing the music first. Music is an emotional medium and connects to us in a way that we can’t always rationalize. I think it’s important to capture the emotion of what we’re trying to say in our music with our lyrics. We’ll take a song hook or just record gibberish for lyrics on a first take of recording a song.

So, for “Manifesto” I was playing piano in my house and came up with the piano hook that formed the core of the song. I brought it to the guys and we started jamming it out. We came up with this straight up rock groove. We felt it was a bold song and we had an idea of what we wanted to do with it, and it felt like we were making a statement. We came up with the title first, and it’s a brief and succinct statement of what we believe as Christians. We settled early on with including “The Lord’s Prayer” in the lyrics so then we had “The Apostle’s Creed” and “The Nicene Creed” and we started working on the lyrics. We knew “Amen” was our big “I agree” chorus. We knew what we wanted to sing, and we found in studying the creeds that a lot of the language reflects what the Christian church isn’t to reflect the sub-sects of the church forming at the time they were written. For us, we were saying what unites us as The Church.

Do you have any Bible verses you used in writing the song? Any life verse?

Luke 11:1-4: Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” So He said to them, “When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

What do consider to be the take-away message for listeners?

We decided that the song needed to reflect universal truths for us as believers and our “Amen” chorus is our agreement that these are the truths that unite us as the body of Christ. Part of our process in having lyrics be the last part of writing our songs, we labored over the lyrics of this song.

This song is about ideas that we have as Christians of what we believe. We can get so caught up in the specifics of ideas that we can lose the bigger picture of God’s redemption. We intentionally included the line “we believe that good has won.”

Sometimes we politicize things and make a lot of statements about what we don’t appreciate about the world. We’re known to the world as political creatures. We can’t as “the church” be proud of being known for our politics. We need to stand for the idea of good, hope, love and faith. The bottom line is that isn’t what we’re known for as Christians. When we attempt to live by an ideal and we fail, we’re viewed as hypocrites and judgmental because we fail and fall back on our judgment of others instead of celebrating what Christ has done for us. We believe in the resurrection of Jesus! Amen.

Here are the lyrics:

We believe in the one true God
We believe in Father Spirit Son
We believe that good has won

And all of the people of God sing along
Amen

We are free He died and lives again
We will be a people free from sin
Well be free a kingdom with no end

And all of the people of God sing along
Amen

Our father who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who have trespassed against us
Lord lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
For Thine is the kingdom, power and the glory forever

We’re singing –
Amen.

Here’s Matthew Henry’s commentary on Luke 11:1-4: “Lord, teach us to pray is a good prayer, and a very needful one, for Jesus Christ only can teach us, by his word and Spirit, how to pray. Lord, teach me what it is to pray; Lord, stir up and quicken me to the duty; Lord, direct me what to pray for; teach me what I should say. Christ taught them a prayer, much the same that he had given before in his sermon upon the mount. Let us in our requests, both for others and for ourselves, come to our heavenly Father, confiding in his power and goodness.”

“Manifesto” is the type of song I wish I was singing at my church right now. The song boldly declares a statement of faith: “We believe in the one true God, We believe in Father Spirit Son, We believe that good has won, And all of the people of God sing along, Amen.” This worship anthem is just the type of infusion that the church needs with its honesty and bold lyrics. The song ends with “The Lord’s Prayer.”

What’s most impressive is how these catchy songs will have you singing along at the top of your lungs after just a couple of listens. This is the best new worship band I’ve heard since Delirious? which is absolutely incredible. Just like Delirious? I think The City Harmonic has a great opportunity to reach the lost for the Kingdom of God with their transparent lyrics and incredible musical talent. This album completely rocks and is loaded with songs you can proudly share with your friends and family. The themes of this album are trusting God, loving Him and loving others as He loved us. I believe that Good has won! Amen.

Check out the music video of the song here.