Sisters

So we learn this is the first song they wrote together. You can easily imagine how someone finds that lovely lovely twinkling guitar melody and the other someone tests different chords against it until they got stuck with the ultra-classic chord pattern that became Sisters a few hours and probably several spliffs later. As always, the effect of repeating a strong guitar melody in different chord contexts does the trick, as it would do later in Aura, Anaesthesia and other masterpieces.

This is not only the first song they wrote together, it must be the first featuring Kilbey's distinguished one-note-chanting: "I can see them all, I can see them call...breathing all the wasted hours, talking to the dying flowers..." Compare it to Shadow Cabinet's "Bliss comes first as a jangling flood" or Aura and you know what I mean. Also, this section gives us, for the first time, a certain flowery whiff of hippy incense, in strong opposite to the hard rock outings and the wavey jangle of Skins and Heart.

Whenever I listen to Sisters, I always thought the song had a younger, much younger sister. I guess I even planned to think about it, but it had to wait until now. I guess the sister is a Business Woman, born some 13 years later. There are certain similarities in the guitar lines, and the falling fourth cadenza ("...tooooo her") of Sisters makes a comeback. This very cadenza, that falling note at the end of the verse and the resting on the dominant chord is so bloody Kilbesque, if The Church ever get their Rutles, they would use it all the time, together with the one note intonations and the melancholic tendrils always twining around the happy songs...

Busdriver 2

by fandorin

There are three things about Busdriver I really really like - the first open chord guitar riff after the intro chug, the doubled-up vocals and the rhythm change in the end. Also the sinister lyrics... "Busdriver, busdriver there's no one else but us" - i don't have to read on to understand being trapped on a bus, driving into the Realm of Darkness isn't my fav hobby. Who in the end is the Busdriver? Is it God? Jesus? The Devil? The four busdrivers of the apocalypse? The lyrics are fucking scary. A guy noticing he has been on that bus forever, and noone else but the busdriver, finally singing to the busdriver...as there is that sign "don't talk to the busdriver".  

Fiery rain pouring from the sky. Baal, Thor and Zeus throwing lightnings, hammers and other stuff from Walhalla, Olymp and wherever Baal's dwellings might have been... Odin's raven hiding in terror. Cassandra and Teiresias dancing the mussolini. A blind archangel Gabriel taking the death mask of the sun. Quicksilver boiling in the oceans. You really start to hate the place and pray for salvation and all of a sudden, you find yourself on a bus at "Speed"-speed. You read the ad - "Charon's Comfy Shuttle Bus", that greek guy driving the bus sells you a ticket and you're outta here, next stop Styx River Station. 

It reminds me of two things - a surrealist short story called The Tunnel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt about a man taking the train to his job, and suddenly he notices the drive takes longer than ever, and they have entered a neverending tunnel. There's no way to contact the driver, and you're just stuck in that dark train forever (Finally, the train is heading completely vertically and the falling student lands on the front glass of the still falling locomotive, where he greedily stares into the oncoming darkness. The train conductor, ever concerned with duty, asks what they should do, but the student answers: “Nothing (...) God let us fall. And now we'll come upon him.") the other thing is a sci-fi series by russian author Max Frei - a guy dreams something up, those people start to appear regularily in his dreams, they become friends, and somehow they tell him to take the l-train there-and-there (there is no stop, but he goes there nevertheless), and he is transported into another world by train.

It's somehow cool, despite its blatantly unsnappy title. Actually, Busdriver's shaky coolness is reciprocal to the title's snappiness. A shame they never had a song called The TV engineer or My lovely horse. 

PS - Food for thought 

In the early days, Steve Kilbey must have been obsessed with the cars and driving motif. Cars, cars, cars - "I parked my car by some memories" (She never said), "People grow up and learn to drive some car" (Tear it all away), Busdriver, "A car abandoned long before, when I was free" (Fräulein), "Grief won't last in the departing cars" (Field of Mars), "The scenes where cars once crawled these streets" (A Fire Burns), "I must have put the horse before the cart" (You Took), "Inside the car sat a sulky blonde" (The Night is very soft), "Poppies sleep undamaged, we drive into the east" (It's No Reason), "Still troubled by the rumbling of a million distant cars" (Tristesse), "I start the car for Ten Mile Beach", "I start the car for Violet Town" (Already Yesterday), "So now we're cruising down this shuddering highway" (Myrrh) 

1) What is the significance of the author's view on cars? 

2) "Nebukadnezar's Parking Place" is a metaphor for what? 

3) Examine the author's relation to his car Tibor using the known sources. 

2000 words, essay deadline: Feb 31

Busdriver

by chrome3d

A song that has been officially released only on the b-side of The Unguarded Moment vinyl single. Busdriver is a song that gets a lot of flak and most of it to me is quite unnecessary. It has that usual Of Skins and Heart-era chug chug guitar style and to me it sounds mostly okay. Hard rock guitar solos sound especially nice here. I don't know why this has been left out of Hindsight-compilation but lesser song like In a Heartbeat is included. This song still doesn't inspire me to really deeply think about its meaning. It's just something that I want to get over and done with and move on to better ones.

Why is there whistling in the end of the tune? It makes me think of many meanings about what kind of devilish busdriver inspired the song in the first place. It's like something from a Morricone-spaghettiwestern and there is a youtube-video that fits in the mood of a crazy duelling busdriver perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VyeOBetaJk

Busdriver, busdriver there's no one else but us
And I can't picture any time
When I wasn't on the bus

Or is the driver the hangman himself that transports our storyteller around in his bus on an endless journey? There is something sinister and gloomy about the story in a clumsy way. Groundhog Day meets Twilight Zone. I can understand why it never made the cut to Of Skins and Heart or any compilations (but it should have been in the remaster). My theory is that Busdriver doesn't sound nowhere near as good as Fighter Pilot...Korean War. Fighter Pilot...Korean War is a title that sounds stylish and cool, Busdriver doesn't.

You've Got To Go

by Dugster

I get as much pleasure from all the b-sides as I do from the albums. I think this started when I made my 2nd Church purchase with Hindsight. What a bizarre album that is in (haha) hindsight. Real mix of singles, b-sides, ep tracks, etc. Not a best of and not a leftover collection but something truly unique. And where my love for this band was truly sealed. I only had Starfish until I bought Hindsight which seemed a good place to play catch up (even though it cost me something like £15 for a double cassette! Which still sounds really expensive 20 years later!!!). Anyway, Hindsight just blew my young mind away.

You've Got To Go is a really fun song to me. The heavy breathing throughout and breathlessly fast singing sets it apart from the rest of the early stuff. Bit of a Spanish feel with maracas adding an interesting twist. Kicks in with the deep breath 7secs in and never really lets up.
Where have you got to go? Never really find out. Maybe to Tuscany just in time for nightfall. Not sure Musk has many moons though... Or maybe you just have to leave which seems more likely. Chorus is a little uninspiring I guess but hey its only 2mins 44secs might as well just enjoy it for what it is! Anyway according to SK on the Hindsight notes it "didn't exactly turn out as I'd imagined".

I wonder what he imagined?

Why did this song crop up again on the Disenchanted 12"? Bizarre.

Fräulein

by fandorin

I'm highly interested in the production side of music. Recording tricks? Fifty-seven ways to record a bass drum? Channeling guitar signals? Give it to me!! There are some albums with awesome songs and lousy/dated/production. Then there are some brilliantly produced albums, with each microphone more expensive than my monthly rent, not having anything to offer musically. Sometimes it all comes together. And sometimes there are albums being produced in a certain style that doesn't suit the music. Production misfits. Like Beavis and Butthead at that audience with the pope. It just doesnt fit. Now, there were some brilliant albums produced by Nick Launay, like, say, Kate Bush's The Dreaming consisting of so many weird and strange sounds your average producer won't have dreamt of - but his take on Seance wasn't exactly the work of a genius, was it? Anyone ever listened to the first Springsteen album? Rock songs produced as folk songs. The first Genesis album? Pretty good adolescent folk ballads with a mystic touch, overproduced and ruined by Jonathan King; imagine Joe Boyd's take on this.

Fräulein, "Bob Clearmountain's favourite Church song" - i always loved it because of its german title. Yes, there have to be döts. The song might sound totally untypical - but maybe only if your first impression is like mine and you first meet it after having devoured Starfish, Gold Afternoon Fix and Priest=Aura. There were many doors open for Kilbey the songwriter, and I almost get the impression he wanted to explore what could be done, balladey AOR stuff with a gloomy twist (Don't open the door), yearning jangle (Tear it all away), little prog epics, new wavey singles... I used to consider Of Skins and Heart just "the power-poppy debut album", but the more I think about it, the more i'm surprised by the stylistic openness.

Fräulein is another compound in the compound eye - straight hard rock with a darker power pop twist. It may sound strange, but there were a lot of real hard rockers among those first dozen of songs, just if you didnt know they made something like Priest=Aura or Sometime Anywhere later... BUT You don't really hear it, because they were produced as new wavey stuff, slightly robotic and thumping instead of energetic. Just like Life Speeds Up, it all sounds a little stiff. Just for a small mind travel - imagine Fräulein played by Iron Maiden. Can you imagine? It would sound, well...cool and natural, won't it?

They never opened the Fräulein door again, you might think. But - really, didn't they?

Tantalized has some pretty obvious arena rock features, but you rather get the impression of something elegantly rushing along because Peter Walsh avoided all stereotypes of hard rock, choosing a wonderful (!) brass arrangement, a droning hammond organ and didn't really distort the guitars. Now imagine Metallica or Queensryche playing it - add some breaks, power chords, pump up the drum sound, let James Hetfield snare the lyrics through clenched teeth - structurally, you won't have to change anything in the song, maybe add a blinding Kirk Hammett guitar solo...again, the main difference is in the production. There seemed to be categories - "it's that moptop band from Australia, no, we don't call Mutt Lange..." A lot of the stylistic ambiguity might result from the record company's firm conviction The Church was a new wave band, no matter how deeply Kilbey was rooted in the 1970es...

Still a good fun song, and a hoot on bootlegs!!

In a Heartbeat

by chrome3d

"...we still sometimes drag this out and give it a good kicking" (Hindsight sleeve notes)

I don't see this song mentioned a lot. Busdriver gets a lot more mentions. That note from Hindsight is just about the only description that I can find. I want to imagine if the things said in these notes are still true even though over 20 years have passed. It's funny to think that in these days the band would be rehearsing and someone says "In a heartbeat would be good now".
This song appears only on b-side of She Never Said and as track 2 on Hindsight. It´s not very good and is quite halfbaked. It´s quite simple and not very clever so it's no wonder that it has been left out from Of Skins and Heart-remaster. Kinda like if AC/DC would do a popsong and in their customary fashion song consists of dang-dang-dang-bridge-name of the song twice as a chorus etc. structure. It shouldn't be criticized too much as it has been left out of almost every compilation and never mentioned. It's so unlike other songs Steve has written. Why they have chosen this as a b-side of their first single is a small wonder as Steve has made better songs before 1980. It still has quite interesting instrumental parts from 2:20. Tinny Stranglers-synths start to get some fleeting goth shades and solo is far too airy and spacy for this kind of song. I'm still glad they didn't follow this route, because if they had then there wouldn't be many people to remember them these days. Maybe I'm wrong and they would be cherished as one of the heroes of 80es synthpop with their funny and simple pop tunes.

Too fast for you

This was attached to the end of Of Skins and Heart with Sisters and Tear It All Away. I have always seen those songs as integral part of the album, although it's quite clear that the album closes with Don't Open The Door To Strangers. This song feels like a bridge between the harder rock of Of Skins and Heart and the warmer atmosphere of The Blurred Crusade. This is The Church at their most poppy behaviour. It's almost straight forward happy tune, unlike almost every one of their other tunes. Even when they go for full pop attack - like Easy, One Day, You Are Still Beautiful or Business Woman - there is always an autumnal melancholic sheen somewhere hidden there as if they are ashamed to go for full frontal pop attack. I don't feel that melancholic sheen here but only in some lines. Line like "When the say it's over" should be followed by even more melancholic one (according to churchy logic) but instead it's followed by "It's not over!" Also the tum-tu-tum-tu-tum jungle drum part always makes me happy. You are not going too fast for me, oh no!

Tear it all away 2

by Hanani

I must have been 12 years old, maybe thirteen. I wanted Tear it All Away to speak for me, even though it didn't accurately reflect me or my life.

Tear it All Away was my introduction to the Church at the same time as Unguarded Moment, probably one step behind, though, when MTV was young and I DID know Unguarded Moment from that time a year or so earlier. M(tv) Tape was the compilation tape my older brother made for me, the watershed moment in my life of music. The Church, INXS (Don't change), Aztec Camera (Oblivious), A Flock of Seagulls (obvious one, i think) and the Producers were all represented on there as well. Unguarded Moment was the second song on the tape, after Don't Change. Tear it all away then ensued in its splendor.

Unguarded Moment is undoubtedly the catchier song. Tear it all away, though, was the song that told me I needed to hear more from the band because there wasn't a second superior song by Flock of Seagulls, for example. My brother thought enough to put two great songs by the church on the tape, so I asked my brother to dub the whole album for me. Shabooh Shoobah was the B side and the American release version ("The Church") was side A. If memory serves me right, I eventually heard the CD version when I picked up the import collection Hindsight at a record convention in Chicago in 1989. And God bless The Church, because the lyrics were included on Hindsight (!) . I have an old, yellowing notebook somewhere in the garage with all the lyrics I could muster of Tear it all away because I thought i had a chance to get it all. And no, I am not going to try and find it, although I will tell you that this song has a strong smell -- not repugnant, mind you -- with adolescent, pubescent overtones. I wanted to the song to speak for me, and tried so hard to make it so.

I seldom listen to you anymore, brave song, yet neither do I think of Janet Brewer. We'll call it a fair trade, 'k?

Tear it all away 1

by fandorin

I first found Tear It All Away on my copy of Of Skins And Heart aka The Church. I never really got it but it was released after Of Skins And Heart as a double single; for the US release, Fighter Pilot was kicked from the album and replaced by Tear It All Away.

What to say. It has got written "new direction" all over it. Gone is the chugging - for good (whenever they returned to power chords later, they made sure to add exotic flavour and eccentricity). Gone is Nigel's awkward drumming that always needed a lot of studio trickery to sound acceptable. Good. Gone - maybe unfortunately - is the youthful crashing power and the roguish fun that dominated the debut album. The Church is a band that never really matured. They made a debut album and when they released their follow-up, they were completely grown-up. At least on records. Make sure to listen to early bootlegs - a hard rocking band driven by the punk drums of Richard Ploog.

I guess the "chug chug" which is a convention, a cliché but also a way to make sure everyone understands they're playing rock music had been deleted because from now on, they had a functioning rhythm section and could afford to decouple guitars and rhythm track, resulting in more freedom for Peter and Marty, which would result in the highly unconventional interplay evolving from 1982 on. It's exactly where Blurred Crusade begins, and, in some ways, it's better than anything on Blurred Crusade as it's perfectly weighed between power, romanticism, melancholy and serene happiness. Check out Peter Koppes' multitracked guitar solo owing a lot to Mick Ronson and the always sublime effect of stopping the drums just to leave a heavenly jangle in the air. A good example of their carefully constructed intro sections (The Church are MASTERS of the intro section), In opposite to lot of the namby pamby bloodless bland 80es jangle popsters, Tear It All Away has a throbbing heart and depth and slight despair. This is as far from college rock as Sepultura.