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| Name: | fip |
| Review Source (if not you): | CREEM [USA] - March 1985 |
| Review or Comments: | The Church
"Remote Luxury" (Warner Bros.) by Robert Christgau I see these Aussies as the wimp Del Fuegos--musically they wind up just where they want and epistemologically they go next to nowhere. All right, so the songs are quite pretty in a modernized early-Faces/late-Zombies kind of way--more consistently so than the '60s competition (which gives them a leg up on the Fuegos, who like the macho boys they are take on the Stones). I even get the point: the sweet, melancholy alienation the band cultivates is an attractive alternative to the crass pragmatism and/or self-righteous nihilism of their contemporaries. But where my own fave formalists the Shoes are honest enough to focus their lyrics on the very limited social milieu essential to the nurture of such alternatives, these guys evade specifics via metaphor and have the presumption to reproduce their hazy poetry on the inner sleeve. Which may help explain why the music sometimes almost drifts away. B |
| Name: | wes |
| Review or Comments: | Whoever wrote the thing that precedes this is a fool. The Church on Remote Luxury sound nothing at all like the Byrds. The only thing the Church have in common with the Byrds is that among their contemporaries, they're the coolest of the cool. In other words, tho' they be not the best songwriters, per se, their sound and their aura and simply the most cutting, heavy, and haunted/ing.
And to mention REM in the same breath as Kilbey's group is grotesque. They couldn't conjure one tenth of the ghosts in the Church's machine. We heard Constant In Opal on the radio in '84 and freaked out. The record has only gotten heavier with every year that has passed since then. It's far and away the best Church record (yeah, I know it wasn't a record of theirs in the usual sense, etc.). It's their peak, their only great album, and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't get what these guys are really all about. Take your Heydays and your Starfishes and stick 'em where the sun don't shine. It's mush, it's crap; most of what these guys have done is mediocre beyond hope of redemption, but this record shines like the morning star. For its true sequel, look not to what they did in the 80's or 90's (even though Priest=Aura started back toward the path), but to these tracks on After Everything...: After Everything, Radiance, and Night Friends. In some very lucid moments, Kilbey got back to where he once belonged. The chorus of Radiance is an equivalent to the chorus of Violet Town, and Night Friends is an entirely new place, tho' hearkening back, in its chorus, to the bizarre qualities of Sisters. Anyway, you've heard the truth now, Good luck. |
| Name: | fip |
| Review Source (if not you): | Unknown (clipping) |
| Review or Comments: | Still ploughing a fairly Byrds-like groove in breezy pop, "Remote Luxury" breezes along with its McGuinnalike guitars and clean, uncluttered production. There's nothing particularly innovative about it (and nothing even threatening to rival '82's "Sing Songs" EP), but the band's remarkably durable naivety and a solid lack of pretention are a refreshing antidote to the increasingly frustrating excesses of their nearest contemporary equivalents, REM.
The Church remain jauntily self-effacing, and while the strain begins to show on "Into My Hands" (which rides just a little too close to "Chestnut Mare" for comfort) for the most part it's hard not to imagine the whole ensemble cracking up and launching into a debauched vaudevillian recital of "Mr Spaceman", the Byrds song which is closest in spirit to The Church's ethereal janglings. The map references might be etched deeply into these grooves, but The Church still manage to avoid sounding dated. It's a trait they seen to share with most of their fellow Antipodeans; The Church could be as anachronistic as they wanted, but the scars of living 20,000 miles from the nearest point of western civilisation would still show through. And it's good - where else could you hear the Flying Burrito Brothers rewriting one of those lovely little singles Pink Floyd used to make after Syd Barrett quit and still sounding as if they were making a valid contemporary statement? That song is "Volumes" and, as an indication of the wealth of wonderment included in this record, it speaks for itself. -Dave Thomas |
| Name: | fip |
| Review Source (if not you): | SOUNDS [UK] - 1984 |
| Review or Comments: | THE CHURCH
'Remote Luxury' (Carrere CAL 213) *** 1/2 (3.5 stars) Maybe it's the Anglo origins of Churchmen Steve Kilbey and Marty Willson-Piper, but the path this Australian quartet beat to the door of American rock 'n'roll is neither as straight nor as narrow as popularly plotted in the past. Of course, the touchstones are present and correct; the plangent melody of a song like 'No Explanation' (one REM would be proud to have written), the Byrdsian click of 'Into My Hands' or the more current if less alluring moodiness of 'Constant In Opal'. But Kilbey's lightly drawn, brightly figured songs don't thrive on a checklist of stock-in-trade r'n'r imagery. Thus 'Remote Luxury' conjures up, variously, a host of Sixties mind-expanders, the plod and plunder of the Psychedelic Furs and even the likes of Vangelis and Mike Oldfield! To first time Church-goers, it might seen an unholy mess, but shorn of the brutal beat that kept 1983's 'Seance' from taking off, 'Remote Luxury' navigates between its stylistic stools with a confidence borne of experience. -Bill Black |
| Name: | Carlos |
| Review or Comments: | Well, it's difficult for me to express in words when the feeling is too strong. It's commonplace to say that this album is a masterpiece.I got to know it maybe in 1993 and I still love these songs. They can cure me in moments of despair... I adore THE CHURCH! |