http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/04/the-church-untitled23-pangea-coffeehounds-music-review/

By Brian Bieniowski • Apr 9th, 2009 • Category: Beyond, Music Reviews
The Church
Untitled #23/Pangea/Coffeehounds
(Unorthodox/MGM)
Rating: 4 out of 5



Catastrophic uncertainty in the world and the Church stand again with three new works to help make sense of all the chaos. I like their business model-regularly launching space and trance rock masterpieces regardless of who's paying attention. I've been a fan for seventeen years, since I heard their biggest hit on an old 120 Minutes CD compilation, when teenagers would bother to go into record shops and buy samplers to figure out the new bands. Now a new record, a single, and an EP, the first of each in a few years, if you don't count the continuing side-projects and tertiary releases like the somewhat rough, to put it politely, soundtrack (to a Jeff VanderMeer novel) of only a few months ago.

But what Church would we hear on 2009's Untitled #23? The fin de siècle mystics post-Gold Afternoon Fix, before the late-nineties dethroned-wasteland Church (this latter era contained the underrated Magician Among the Spirits followed by a long silence until Hologram of Baal)? The dusty and broke raconteurs of the Quick Smoke at Spot's b-sides era? The overheated lysergic cowboys of Forget Yourself? The sweet art-damaged drifters creeping out of upstairs windows on Uninvited, like the Clouds and After Everything Now This? We know the sci-fi dreams of Heyday and before are gone, embittered and disenchanted during Starfish already, but it was okay because the echoes left have way more to tell us anyway.

The music is a little bit of all of these, by my estimation. Every Church record's got a misfire, every single and EP has a perfect gem of a b-side, and this latest brace is no different. By the titles:

The Pangaea disc contains the "single" from the album, a lovely tune in the vein of "Crash/Ride" and the softer tunes from After Everything and Uninvited, a velvet fog drifting out of Copenhagen 2:30 AM. This is followed by a duo of songs sung by Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper, "LLC" and "Insanity," respectively. The former harks back to paisley underground cheers from Koppes's solo Manchild & Myth, the latter slouched in the darkened coffee bars Willson-Piper's recent solo efforts have inhabited since Hanging Out in Heaven. These welcome interludes are followed by the strongest lengthy piece the Church have ever managed on record, the nearly eighteen minute "So Love May Find Us," which I feel should have been on the main album, as I'll mention later. While the Church's "jam" discs (Jammed, Bastard Universe) have been, arguably by nature, self-indulgent and unfocused, this track manages to pump along with great lyrics and musical shifts throughout; the sense of a band willing to stretch out within a song, while still keeping it tight and organized. It's over much too quickly.

The Coffee Hounds EP contains what I feel ranks among their very best songs, "The Coffee Song." In an earlier age before personal record labels marketing directly to fans, when artists had to worry about what songs to put where on their major label releases, this would have been a criminal backstaging of such a great song. Twin swoon-guitars interlocking, hazy atmospheres, languid vocal delivery-it's everything I love about the Church. This is followed by a bright, driving, unexceptional cover of Kate Bush's seminal "Hounds of Love" and an excellent instrumental version of "The Coffee Song" that fades in and out like an apparition. This one is the best supplemental EP since the Louisiana and Block singles from years past.

And, finally, the main course, which is the full album, Untitled #23, cheaply packed in plain black cardboard wraps (for those of us who were impatient and ordered the "special edition" that came with a really nice T-shirt), or the cover above for the regular edition in a digipak. Ten solid songs, one or two of which would have made excellent B-sides in favor of "The Coffee Song" and "So Love May Find Us," and four or five that number among the Church's best songs of any time period. "Cobalt Blue" could have been a lost track from the opiated era of Hologram of Baal. "Deadman's Hand," one of their best recent songs, is driving and claustrophobic, like "Grind" updated for troubled and hopeful times. The return of "Pangaea," followed by another gem of a track, "Happenstance," which, like "Unified Field" of the previous record, should have been a hit in a better world. This is followed by Kilbey in full-on moon-eyed Bob Dylan mode, "Space Saviour," which I just can't get into at all-about two minutes too long for me. Two sparse tracks, "On Angel Street" and "Sunken Sun," follow-the latter containing fine keyboard work (and just a hint of "Milky Way for a moment?)-and slightly dilute the album's previous momentum. Back up to speed with the epic "Anchorage," chugging along on strong guitars and declarative vocal delivery. The album ends with the incredible tracks "Lunar" and "Operetta," the first reminding me of the sadly ignored aether mysticism of the Magician era; auditory moonlight. "Operetta" is Church in Sgt. Pepper mode, a sweeping, melancholy epic-my favorite track on the record.

The production of these various works seems a little "off" to me, but I'm not expert enough to weigh in on just exactly what is wrong about it, other than that it sounds a little rough, in the same way Forget Yourself suffered. I miss the crystalline production and cover art values of Arista, as seen and heard on Priest = Aura, but the major label days are long gone, replaced by more local efforts by band members and associates. Still, in an era when a band like the uncompromising Church chug along for thirty years, with almost all of their peers fallen by the wayside, they are a kind of treasured anachronism. I'm just happy they're still here for me, and anybody else who'll lend a kind ear. "… you keep on going."