Tristesse

It´s easy to see how the heyday of the band is somewhere around here. After Myrrh Tristesse starts with irresistible opening riff and never let´s go after that. These two opening songs are about the best start of any album. This song is just pure enjoyment from start to finish. The mystic feeling of Myrrh coupled with the catchy pop approach of Tristesse draws me straight in to the world of Heyday.

The lyrics of the Church are not usually sexy. They leave the door open for many conclusions but sex is usually not one of them. That must be because The Church is one of the whitest bands on the planet as Steve has admitted. Now From Steve Kilbey Live DVD I learned that Tristesse was about the sad feeling after sex. Let´s see from Wikipedia:

"Sexual intercourse can sometimes lead to a feeling of melancholy called post-coital tristesse (from Latin post-coital, and French tristesse, literally - "sadness"). This is more common in women than in men[citation needed]. Many PCT sufferers may also exhibit strong feelings of anxiety, anywhere from five minutes, to two hours after coitus. Some men also report similar feelings of anxiety and guilt after masturbation. The phenomenon is referred to by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza in his Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione when he said "For as far as sensual pleasure is concerned, the mind is so caught up in it, as if at peace in a [true] good, that it is quite prevented from thinking of anything else. But after the enjoyment of sensual pleasure is past, the greatest sadness follows. If this does not completely engross, still it thoroughly confuses and dulls the mind."

I just don´t get the whole idea of Tristesse to be honest. There has been a wide array of mixed emotions after duo and solo performances for sure, but sadness has not been one of them. This is no macho bullshit, the sadness issue just doesn´t open up to me. I can vaguely understand the guilt part if religion and other relationships were part of the game. It´s much more understandable that the mind is thinking something else during the performance but when it´s over what´s there to worry after that? To be honest this whole concept feels something like an artsy fartsy french movie director would come up with to make his grainy and shaky black and white movie to have more depth.

If sex is the primary activity in the song then it all becomes so much simpler:

"Let´s have sex anywhere
in deserts under the sun and stars
in a hotel suite in rich man´s town
in a hut in botany bay
I´m just sad that it has to end
I can´t stay much longer
and now I have Tristesse"

That was my own very simplified humour vision about it. I have heard many local bands trying to get a summer hit with that kind of simple formula. One guy even tried it repeatedly! In the end I believe that this title was lifted from the "Book Of Fancy International Words" couple of pages after Tantalized. I don´t mind being educated. The Church offers plenty of stuff to think about.

Myrrh

The previous albums of the Church, Seance and Remote Luxury, were good albums but there was something little missing in them. It was as if the band wasn´t firing on all cylinders. This could be understandable if the bassplayer dictates what guitarplayers should play and doesn´t let them do what comes naturally. That approach lacked spontaneity and improvisation. Both of those qualities are definitely found in Heyday and the band sounds like they are energized and on top of their game.

Shadow Cabinet from Remote Luxury was the first real collaboration of the band and here they continue seamlessly from that point and what that song promised. Myrrh is cut from the same tree as Shadow Cabinet as it evokes that same levitating feeling of flying through the air without much restrictions. I can´t describe that but luckily it´s been done before here. The aerodynamic chromium machine is well oiled and glows in the psychedelic sun on it´s way to undiscovered territories. This is something that nobody else has done before.

From the chiming opening riff and the buildup it´s obvious that this stuff is busting at it´s seams. There is so much directions and ideas that the song can hardly contain them all. It´s as if every part of the song tries to be better and better. The guitarists duel for the attention and try to gest the best out of each other. It´s going forward all the time. By the time the super hypnotic guitar behind the chorus kicks in I´m always sold. This is a song that I seldom grow tired of. "How can you be so invisible?" I always hear that in my mind in the form of "How can we be so invincible?" Is there some teeny weeny thing I could criticize? Hmm, maybe the singing could be mixed a little bit louder? Is that highlighting keyboard really necessary? Naah, that´s nitpicking and I should shut up.

What is the secret ingredient that makes this fly so easily and be so irresistible? I like to think it´s Peter Koppes who is the secret magic ingredient here. Marty can do the other flashy parts but the real magician behind the ethereal architecture and structure has to be Peter. They are both given free reigns and immediately they make the most out of it. In one word: inspired.

Like the music is rich and inventive so are the lyrics. They go from Jericho city to Apache gunmen to cruising down the highway. From big to small, from history to present and beyond. This is the blockbuster of my head. It´s a lot bigger event than SCHWARZENEGGER IS TERMINATOR written with bold font on the biggest billboard you can ever imagine. The Church has had many good moments and they will have numerous more but this is as close as it gets to what they can achieve if I think of mega super Blockbuster for the MIND.

"You would have thought I´d had enough" by now? I´ve had this album for 20 years now. It always surfaces in some form or other. Scratchy vinyl, hissing cassette in the car, CD-r, MP3 from the phone, played on computer or whatever and it still keeps me entertained and thinking. I might think I´m over it but then it pulls me back like a magnet. I´m going all fanboy now but why not? This song should do it if there ever was one.

Remote Luxury

It would be easy to dismiss the title song of Remote Luxury as just another instrumental, even though it´s just their second instrumental. The first one being the b-side The Golden Dawn. I listen to The Church mainly because SK sings there and the instrumentals are not so interesting by default. Listening to the instrumental repeatedly however reveals many things about it. It feels like a bridge between The Blurred Crusade-period and Heyday-period. A touch of Happy Hunting Ground there with the slow rhythym and feeling. The guitar washes and jangles that promise something for the future. That promise was definitely taken to the extreme with Heyday. Then the Blurred Crusade build-up with the keys. You know that keyboard sound used so many times in TBC? Like ancient organ creating a chant of mourning viking warriors or crusaders (heh, or something). I would like to know how it was created as it hasn´t been that widely used elesewhere. Mixed with higher sounding organ and the guitars it creates a quite dense atmosphere that makes the mind wonder to distant places. Almost as well as the songs with lyrics. I like to see it as an ancient story with crusaders and moments after the battle. Like a memory from the Blurred Crusade that is long gone and the new glorious era will soon begin. To me this song most of all represents a transitional period and the album between their masterpieces.

The most important thing to me with this song is that the next phase of their saga is perhaps one of their finest moments. I can hear a stadium full of people shouting and chanting for Heyday. Okay, let´s make it a theatre full of people...talking, muttering or even just thinking...the opening riff of Myrrh looped to hypnotic heights...a promise of a ride to heaven and back...

Heyday
Heyday
Heyday
Heyday
Heyday
Heyday
Heyday
Heyday
Heyday
Heyday!

Shadow Cabinet

by fandorin

Off Remote Luxury, Shadow Cabinet has the best, most elegant flow. It is the first song of The Church featuring that rushed, breathless atmosphere of mystery. I always love that slick sense of flying, rushing and soaring through atmo-, strato-, narcospheres... it's almost like a little sub-genre in The Church's catalogue. Myrrh comes to mind. Night Of Light, none on Starfish, the grandiose, slowed-down build-up of Essence, The Time Being... Untoward is a great later example of what i mean. Listening to songs like those makes me lose my sense of gravity.

This is where they take off and fly.

Now, how do they achieve that illusion of rapidly drifting through endless skies? I know it's all in your head and everyone perceives it differently.

(1) Take a quick, but not too fast 4/4 rhythm, make it insistent

(2) Avoid rapid harmonic changes into far-out keys

(3) thoroughly played quavers

(4) add a vocal line, chanting on one note

(5) certain very long held guitar/keyboard notes will add to the aero power

(6) slight exceptions will make it even flightier

All six features are there. So much for nuts and bolts.

A "chiming riff" by MWP, counterpointal notes by PK. Shadow Cabinet has a very eighties polyethylene shine. I always had the idea of Shadow Cabinet in completely different arrangements, from renaissance madrigal to folk ballad to metal thrasher. Slow it down, add huge guitars and let James Hetfield shout the chorus. "Junction fevaaarrr must have closed down the rayyyyyl..ah!!, the gluttonous wind keeps on nibbling the sayyyyylsyeaaaahh, queueing in the ruins in the wake of the gayyyyyle it's, harmony I sayyyeaaaAAAAhh!!" Hetfield!! Speed it up two times, add a screamer and you have a brilliant speed metal song. it would have worked magnificently in Heyday's sound costume as well as an elegic midtempo song on the opiated Priest=Aura. On the one hand, it has that openness, on the other, the sound they chose fits perfectly. It's one of the first signs of what to encounter on Heyday, just that the stark, detached style would morph into something more gentle, warmer.

A climax of the song was always that ultra-artificial solo section of toy keyboard and ebowed guitar dueling. Sounds highly improbable, but definitely works wonder! Lyrically, Shadow Cabinet has one of my favourite lines - "Bliss comes first as a jangling flood". Now that's a fucking tagline for The Church, isn't it?

Into My Hands

Cute and twee. There I said it. This song is really pretty but it´s a bit too cute and frustratingly twee. Boy meets girl la-la-laa. This is one of those nursery rhyme- kinda songs. One/album is okay, but two is pushing it. Into My Hands feels almost like a song off from Steve´s first solo album Earthed. I mean even if The Church goes to ultra slow widescreen mode (Old Flame, Summer, Invisible, On Angel Street) there is still something strong to hold it together. The songs have a structure even though they seem to be sculpted entirely from the thin upper clouds and stardust. Into My Hands is wandering on the edge of that magic kingdom but it can never enter the gates. In the middle of other colder and slightly gothic songs of the album Into My Hands gives a nice warm touch but when I focus to this one song it never lifts off from niceness to the dramatic heights they can bake seemingly out of thin air. It works well in the context of the album, whatever the album is here, but as a single song it´s far from what I expect from the band. Sorry.

Violet Town

There isn´t many songs about colours in The Church songbook. There is no songs about black, red, yellow, orange, green, purple or white. White Star Line exists but it´s not about white colour. Cobalt Blue is a new song but it never mentions blue. In Violet Town there is colours unlike in other songs. Violet describes the music of the band as a colour quite fittingly. The music they play is not happy and passionate like red, nor is it sad and blue. Therefore it has to be violet.

The drums are pounding and there is a sense of motion. Another song driven by drums. Marching fast like walking with a mission. Walking through the crowded town yet there is a sense of loneliness. Wandering the streets aimlessly when you are young. Sense of freedom is vast and it´s also heavy on the shoulders. Phantom busses drive by and the streets are empty. Inviolate town...the double meaning, sense of something under the surface. Scary yet gentle.

I love the part that starts at 1:40. It all spirals to mid-song chaotic climax. The hawk of the song. Dogs bark and amusement park rollercoaster ride drowns everything. Then the drums take it back on course: tum-tum-tum-tum. That´s what I remember from this song, the drums. All other instruments are playing a second fiddle.

Autumn Soon

What kind of feeling it is when you know autumn comes soon? The days are still warm and light but there is a sense of the end of the fun carefree season. Shadows become longer and the sky is filled with big rainclouds every now and then. It becomes harder and harder to wear shorts and live like there is no tomorrow. It can´t go on like this forever and you know it.

Am I now describing a season or the song found on Seance b-sides? Bit of both I guess. Like so many times before the song may be deceptively light and fun but there is a lot more going on, quite a lot for a simple b-side. Ornamental guitars decor the room in baroque fashion but somehow I feel that the drums are here the instrument that drives the song. Drums are so prominent all the time and there is even 30 second drum outro in the end. It´s no Moby Dick but if there ever was a song for a live drum solo in The Church catalogue then this is it. A simple fun little song worthy of a b-side but it has no place in Seance.

10 000 Miles

10 000 Miles...is the kinda song they still play, SK and Marty together. Somewhere there near the red point (1.). With acoustic geetaars playing to the faithful. I listen to that stuff from boots, or at least read about it somewhere like the womb. I´m around the other red point (2.) and just about 10 000 Miles away. I wonder if I would go to see them if I was in Australia or if I was an australian. It would be easy to think so but then again it would be easy to think that as an australian my mindset would be different and I would rather enjoy the sun and surfing more than sitting in smoky dark rooms listening to music. Who knows, life is a mystery and there is always something better going on 10 000 miles away. If I made a journey and travelled 10 000 miles then there would probably be something even better 10 000 miles away.

Maybe These Boys

by Fandorin

The infamous Maybe These Boys! A pretty effective build-up, and it's actually quite fascinating in its blatant silliness. The only vaguely similar track in The Church's entire oeuvre is The Faith Healer from A Box Of Birds. I'd love to hear a live medley, with Maybe These Boys and Faith Healer frankensteined together.

Another lesson The Church have learned from Art and Prog Rock is the nullification of the blooze. No blues attached here. Steve Kilbey has sung black notes, red notes, fiery notes, icy-white notes, but rarely blue notes, and if he does, it always generates a certain "this is a stylistic mean" reaction in me. When he hits those high distant notes in the very entertaining great song Nose Dive. He gives it all in Faith Healer. Otherwise, there is nothing bluesy to be found. The Church's version of the blues is a different beast - Real Toggle Action, This Is It, There You Go...all those songs evoke a deadly bleak, tar-black blues vision, but I play these songs rarely. They elude the 12-bar-it's-raining-and-there-are-holes-in-my-fucking-roof-and-my-baby's-gone-blues blueprint, of course...

When the song drifts off, it's getting almost invisible. All the roaring, trumpeting pomposity is falling off, leaving a thin, almost ethereal ghostly vision of a song in the background! It's like a ghost remaining, after the song has died. Mind the vocoder!

Hey, I actually didn't slaughter it at all, did I?

A Month Of Sundays

I had to dig out the original CD copy of Remote Luxury to get in to the mood of the album. Many times the cover art of the album gives some kind of idea what kind of album it is, although with The Church many of the covers are very slightly if at all connected to the music. The closest neighbours of Remote Luxury, Seance and Heyday, give some kind of idea what´s inside the sleeve. Those are really strong visual statements and the message is carried to the music as well. Seance is an album of high crazy contrasts and bright pink (or blue) and Heyday is a warm, tapestry of irresistible happy times. Remote Luxury however doesn´t deliver much visual enjoyment as the image of the androgynous girl in the forest holding dry flowers doesn´t say much. It´s one of the weakest covers in the 80´s of the band. Somehow the visual feel of the album is captured better by the back cover. Plain aqua field and band members in a purple hued boxes. SK looks like a blonde and Ploogy like a girl. Only Marty and PK look like they mean it. There is something directionless in the packaging and it tells a lot about the content too. Many of the songs here are not their best moments and it doesn´t deliver a strong sense of presence.

Being directionless is not a problem A Month Of Sundays as it is the best song of the album. It has a strong presence and it´s a true revelation from start to beginning. The guitars are like the tidal waves splashing to the shore of a big ocean. Endlessly caressing the stones on the beach and perfecting their round forms little by little. I see the oceanic aqua-tinted hues of the back cover in this song more than the thers. The lone guitar jangles in a sad melancholic way like mandolin bleached in the sun and saltwater. Slowly it builds to jubilant chamber pop heights that could match the sparkle of Water Music by Handel. If you don´t know what it is then I can only say that it´s one of the biggest triumphs of excess the classic music has given to the world. Still there is a layer of wind by the ocean and distant whales on top of the whole thing.

This is one of the first songs to give direction to the future of the band 15-20 years later. The future where they will merge many styles, other than the guitar rock they started from, in a sublime way and always sound like themselves and no other. It´s quite fitting that the band plays this song on the tour of the new album Untitled #23 as this song has so much common with the new songs and their atmospheres. With some stretch of imagination I could see it somewhere in the song cycle of Untitled #23. 25 years later this is still fresh stuff.

A title like A Month Of Sundays has many meanings too and it can be seen in many ways. It can be just a month without much to do but it also means a very long time or dreary boring time ( I checked this out as I knew it was bound to be some kind of saying) . It can also be a directionless period where you don´t know what´s going to happen or something is not going to happen. To me it feels like a summer time on the beach and the feeling that it never ends. A time away from the usual routines of every day life. What it feels like when there is nothing exact to do but also the agony that comes from the knowledge that you can do everything. The freedom to choose anything that you want to do but you really don´t know what it is that you want. Being there in the start of adult life in the last summers before entering the real world with it´s obligations. Realizing that there is nobody else to make your future but yourself. The indifference of other people gives you a fright. You just have to figure it out yourself and there isn´t a readymade script to the story of your life.