The Church - C or D/S&D/CB&TT

Anyway, you guys need to help me. I only know the albums up to and including Heyday. Tell me a little about each one from Starfish until now, so that I can figure out what to look out for next. Any clunkers to avoid

The lush pillow-of-Rickenbackers side of them is great, but I'm especially liking the bigger, raunchier, riffy stuff like Life Speeds Up. Did they leave this sort of stuff behind? I read in Wiki that there is ambient-type stuff in the catalogue later. Not sure I'll like that.

Destroy Sometime Anywhere.

A good chunk of the more recent material has a tendency to wander (and turn into the occasional trippy jam), so if that's not really your thing you might want to carefully pick and choose your 21st century Church albums. The one released this year, Uninvited Like the Clouds, is the main exception to the new rule as it's the most straight ahead pop-rock album they've made since Gold Afternoon Fix.

Every album has something to recommend it, though I'm not as big a fan of their trippy jam songs compared to their straightforward pop tunes. The recent albums are more liked for highlights ("Come Down", "Lady Boy" on Magician Among the Spirits, for example) than the album as a whole. Unlike the albums up through Priest=Aura, which work as a single listen.

I haven't heard "Uninvited..." yet, but with the descriptions above, it's now on my list.

That's a solid seal of approval alright. None more solid.

Yes, I'm looking for pop choons rather than trippy jams.

So : Gold Afternoon Fix, Uninvited, Priest=Aura. What was the covers album - I saw a tracklisting and it sounded interesting, do they pull it off?

Dr C., in all the hoopla/discussion of the later albums, I realized I'd left out the most important suggestion. Starfish is by all means essential. It's one of my favorite records of all time, by anybody!

what does that mean??

Starfish is that rarest of things -- band with its own aesthetic slams into American major label world/LA studio hierarchy and *everything* works.

I wouldn't destroy it either, but it does need some serious editing. You can make a strong album out of it if you distill it down with the bonus disc. If anything, just grab "Dead Of The Dead."

I'll also speak up for Hologram Of Baal and After Everything, Now This. They're aren't as strong albumwise as the other ones suggested here (and Great Cthulhu man, get P=A right now!), but contain some of my favorite songs, especially "Louisiana" and the awesome awesome "Numbers."

Which ones? Because I surely can't name any.

Well I'm rediscovering them, Bimble. I used to have all the old albums up to Heyday years ago but they got purged at some point maybe 15 years ago. I kept a double vinyl copy of Hindsight - or so I thought - but when I tried to find it a couple of months ago it was gone, so I assume I must have been imagining that I'd kept it. Obv that had me REALLY wanting to hear it again! THEN I read an article about Marty Willson-Piper's guitars on the web somewhere (yes I'm a sad old muso) which prompted me to pick up a CD copy of Hindsight. And here we are.

He was the first place I had ever heard of Neu! I think. Although I can't really claim I'm a huge fan of theirs I can see how they were trailblazing for the likes of Stereolab.

But I digress...anyway if you check out these albums Dr. C please give us your assessment of them, eh? I must admit an innate prejudice against Starfish a bit, simply because it is so much older than their other best records...maybe I've worn it out over the years. But it's hard for me to see a song like "Blood Money" as appealing to anything but the more stubborn Church fan. I mean, I personally enjoyed the song a great deal long ago, but would a casual Church fan? I wonder. Anyway, I haven't listened to Starfish in its entirety in many many years. I'd guess 1993 at best. Yeah, it's worn out for me in a lot of ways, just simply played it too many times. I'd rather hear Gold Afternoon Fix actually. But maybe it's just comparing two very different times in my life. When Starfish came out, I really loved it, but the Church were not my favourite band, and there was an awful lot of other quite different things going on in the (mostly Brit) indie world when that came out. On the other hand, by the time of Gold Afternoon Fix's release, I was a fanatic and the Church were my whole world. Even though GAF on its own is not by any means their best album.

ANYWAY the moral of the story was that the unreleased song ended up appearing finally on the Sometime Anywhere CD when it arrived. Which was great except...even though I faithfully keep Sometime Anywhere in my collection, I've never found the will to re-investigate that very awkward time in the Church's history. I know there a few gems of songs there, but overall, quite a clunker I think, a glaring embarassment in their oeuvure.

I just love talking about Church albums.
Next up can we mention the Blurred Crusade? PLEEZ?

Also, am finally listening to Kilbey's Remindlessness. Interesting in that you can hear some of the initial stabs at where he and the band would go in future years.

TURN ON TUNE IN DROP OUT

Also: Remindlessness: I have not listened to that in nearly a billion years. Anyone remember his single called "Fireman" circa The Slow Crack or whatever that other album was called? Every time I see the Fireman buttons in the elevator at my building at work I think of that song! :)

But yes, Ned. With a few more drinks I daresay pulling out Remindlessness is well in order and very possible in just a few moments here. Cheers.

Also I wonder if everyone knows that Steve Kilbey's best album is actually...Unearthed? Or was it Earthed? I get them mixed up. The one with "Judgement Day" on it. I think it was Unearthed.

And you know, even though at heart I'm a Church whore, sometimes I feel like I'm not ENOUGH of one you know what I mean? I know there are bigger Church fans than me, but I did fucking put my cents in, and it ought to count for something.

Also I would like to say I'm happy and proud to have found only a year and a half ago the vinyl of Marty Willson-Piper's In Reflection. That fucking thing was IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND back in the day. And one day record shopping with a friend, that thing was mine. Lovely!! Does anyone even have that on CD? Does it exist as such? Hell, maybe it does. But I got a big fucking booklet with it so there. Hahahah.

I like this song on Remindlessness called "The Amphibian". Oh yeah I remember this one. Wow. This is fantastic.

Any opinions on this, or how it relates to the rest of their work?

Starting yet another thread on The Church because of this: the setlist for last night's "Christmas" show in Sydney...
-----
Careful With That Axe Eugene
Cortez The Killer
Master Of The Universe
Magician Among The Spirits
Lord Of Light
Child In Time
Shouldn't Do That
Tantalized
Down Thru The Night
Ritz
Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
Seven By Seven
Block

Silver Machine
Day 5
-----

The show was described as "LOUD," "monotonous," "unfamiliar," and "some guy with a radio set making noises like he's attempting to get reception" with a chunk of the audience apparently fleeing the hall.

This is like my greatest dream concert ever. The fact that it's one of my favorite bands doing this 25 years into their career makes it even better. Apparently it was recorded, so I hope that some/all of this makes it out.

-- Elvis Telecom (quartzcit...), December 26th, 2006.

1. Wide Open Road
2. It's No Reason
3. Reptile
4. Tantalized
5. Electric Lash
6. After Everything
7. Song In The Afternoon
8. Two Places At Once
9. Appalatia
10. Bordello
11. Pure Chance
12. Grind
13. North South East West
14. Comeuppance

So far it's not quite as striking as the first one ("Two Places At Once" isn't altered that much from the original), but I love the sitar-drenched droneout on "Tantalized" and the reworking of "Electric Lash" into a Parsons-esque desert country song.

Has it leaked anywhere?