Hi, after three listenings, in my humble opinion I have to say that this is one of the worst Church albums ever. And I tried hard to like it, God knows I tried. And there´s still people around who criticize GAF! If they could only come up with something as good as that album! God. I´m not gonna say that I miss "Starfish" or "P=A" -those albums are once in a lifetime- I fucking miss an album like GAF!

I find one song, or maybe two songs interesting ("Deadman´s hand" and "Pangea"), and they´re just ok songs. "Cobalt blue" is 2nd hand Bowie, "Space saviour" is U2 with a terrible headache, "On angel street" is chloroform 99.9% purity, and the rest are perfect lullabies cause at that point I was constantly falling asleep. And that "Operetta", well, take any psychodelic band of the 60-70´s, mix it up with some vocal harmonies a la Beach Boys, and there you go! For the first time the Church sound like anything but themselves.

Warning: dont listen to this album while driving. Where´s Tim Powles? cause I can only hear tambourines. Koppes and Willson-Piper seemed to be on autopilot (probably their worst album as guitarists). And although Kilbey´s voice sounds really good and the guy sings with soul, when there aren´t songs, you can sing like Pavarotti but...

To me The Church desperately need a producer, otherwise we´ll be condemned to hear the same album over and over again: the same flat opaque production, the complete absence of drums (hence of punch), the feeling that the songs come from total last minute improvisations, undercooked, etc. This is in agreement with the opinion of their official biographer, by the way. Untitled #23 sounds dramatically old, lifeless, full of slow songs and mid-tempo songs, with no memorable chorus at all, boring, no punch at all. Are they lost and waisted? This album makes ULTC to deserve 5/5. You can find in that album songs that are better than this entire album. And hey, all my respect to ULTC!! This time I found myself skipping most of the tracks. It´s like, hey folks let´s come together one week and record something. That doesnt make an album, fuck you´re not Miles Davis, you´re a band of SONGS, remember??? Not last minute ideas that pretend to be songs. Their official biographer himself remarks the point in "No certainty attached": there was a time that The Church worked in an album for lots of months, years...nowadays it´s just a matter of weeks (!!!). No, I´m sorry, I¨m starting to lose the faith...and my money.
I´m not asking for another "Aura" or "Hotel womb", but, please, can you give us another "telepath", another "unified field"?? Can you?

PLEASE??

PLEASE???

I HUNT, THEREFORE I AM...    
Last Edited By: Boriah Aug 8 09 9:45 AM. Edited 4 times.