A Renewed
Crusade

The Church return to form with a stunningly
ambitious album of shimmering rock

The Church ★★★★★

Untitled #23 Unorthodox/MGM


While many of their contemporaries are coming out of retirement and dusting off their Eighties hits for reunion tours, the Church, like Nick Cave, have never called it quits, instead continuing to evolve and experiment with music in a way that puts "cutting edge" rock dinosaurs like U2 to shame. The band have deftly kept the key elements of their trademark sound constant, allowing them to try all manner of experiments around the edges without ever alienating or confusing their die-hard fans. Untitled #23 is their most accessible album in recent years, but it's no less ambitious than recent efforts. Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes's guitars bubble, scrape and swirl in layers so dense that it takes multiple listens to appreciate the complexity of the arrangements. Amazingly, Steve Kilbey's instantly recognisable voice and off-kilter phrasing cuts through even the most murky passages, showing studio-smarts that are seldom seen these days outside of Sigur Rós recordings. Like My Bloody Valentine and the aforementioned Icelanders, the Church know that even the most sonically extreme psychedelia needs to be anchored with a solid melodic idea, and this is where Kilbey earns his stripes as one of the country's most underrated songwriters. You have to admire the Church's stubborn refusal to cash in on their early success and do the whole nostalgia rock circuit thing. By hanging everything on the faith that their best work is still ahead of them, the Church sound every bit as relevant now as they did way back in 1987. Their new songs sound emotional, raw and at times even scarily angry, without ever sounding like they're trying to conjure up demons-long banished by years of comfortable living and golfing trips. Even those with a short attention span will find enough immediacy in their sound to remind them that the band that penned one of Australia's unofficial national anthems "Under the Milky Way" won't be appearing at a leagues club near you anytime soon. - MATT COYTE

Key Tracks:
"Happenstance",
"Operetta"


Last Edited By: Spirit March May 4 09 5:57 AM. Edited 1 times.