After
Everything … Now This
The Church (Thirsty Ear Records)
Released Februrary 2002
Inevitably, some critic somewhere will use this album as another example of outdated
"jangle rock," bemoaning some bands' absolute inability to change their formulaic
style of musicmaking, pointing up the Church as just another example of a band
that somehow survived twenty years too long. Pay no attention. Those who have
kept score know that the Church haven't come close to playing the pop game of
1982's Blurred Crusade or 1988's masterful Starfish in over a decade.
A listen -- better that make three or four, because it takes that long to sink
in -- to their newest long-player After Everything … Now This is proof
positive.
A long time ago, in a pop universe far away, the Church were the masters of strum-and-hum
songcraft. Like a Gothic -- no make that Byronic -- R.E.M., Steve Kilbey and company
fashioned dark dramas composed of free-floating lyricism and chordal structures
that aimed directly for the brain's hook center. Never quite attaining the stardom
they deserved, they stumbled upon a mammoth hit with "Under the Milky Way Tonight",
and have since gone more willfully obscure with each release. For every straight
pop gem they have composed (1997's "Comedown," for example) there have been whole
album sides' worth of meanderings, oblique structures, instrumental shadings that
strayed more toward Eno and Sylvian than McGuinn and Buck.
After Everything
… Now This is not so much a culmination as an encapsulation of the Church's
approach over the past decade. It lacks the stoned-out power of 1998's Hologram
of Baal, the directness of their 1999 covers album Box of Birds, and
the sheer menace of 1991's Priest=Aura, but in its accrual of instrumental
detail, the totality of its atmosphere, it's a keeper. More than ever, Peter Koppes
and Marty Willson-Piper's guitars are like two vines inseparably twined together,
stringing together hypnotic riffs, tasteful bits of dissonance, and chiming punctuations.
Their contributions are especially apparent on the hypnotic yet transcendent "Radiance,"
"After Everything," and "Seen it Coming," all of which reconfigure
Starfish's ache. Willson-Piper also takes a memorable turn in front of
the mike in "Chromium," which spices old-style guitar arpeggios with
utter despair.
Elsewhere, the album recalls 1997's Magician Among the Spirits in its baroque
stylings, minus the self-indulgent instrumentals. "The Awful Ache," "Reprieve,"
and "Night Friends" get high on the additions of strings and treated pianos, and
while little of the old propulsion and power are in evidence, the ambience sucks
you into repeated listenings. This is not necessarily an album to hum along to
(save the insidious opener "Numbers"), but through the final trailing-into-infinity
strains of "Invisible," the trip is as sonically sumptuous as any you'll find
in alternative rock. The only true clunker in the bunch is "Reprieve," which attempts
to pull together a pocket symphony but never weds its disparate strands.
As for Steve Kilbey -- it's plain that he vanished down the tunnel of drug-addled
lyrical obscurity quite some time ago, but his voice remains a remarkable instrument,
velvety and wistful. In an age where baritone yodelings and Eddie Vedder soundalikes
dominate, it stands out more than ever. Koppes and Willson-Piper provide the canvas,
but it is Kilbey's musings that splash this enterprise with true Church-ness.
Other jangle pop bands may try to preserve their formulae in amber, but the Church
opted out of that one-way street long ago; this latest album is their dissertation
for the pleasures of organics and atmosphere over the college radio game.
