Posts Tagged ‘The Church’

Albums Turning 30: Public Image Ltd and The Church

Posted: January 6, 2016 in Albums, Alternative
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I’ve come across several lists of albums turning 30 this year. There are some great albums on these lists, and at one time I owned quite a few in some form or other. With so much good music having come out in 1986, I thought it’d be fun to do a series of posts on songs from albums released that year.

The first song I’m starting with is Public Image Ltd’s “Rise.” It was the first single released from PIL’s fifth album Album, released January 26, 1986, and is reportedly about apartheid. It was the biggest chart topper by the band, reaching #11 on the UK charts, and placing #206 on NME’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Although I wasn’t old enough to go clubbing upon its release, I do remember dancing to this song years later. After a while, the dance floor turned into one collective up and down motion. May the road rise with you…

 

I was a big fan of The Church in the early ‘80s but lost track of them until the single “Under the Milky Way” came out in 1988. I’ve since discovered the band’s music from the mid ‘80s, and glad I did. The album Heyday, released in the US in January of 1986, in my opinion, is one of their best. It’s also probably one of their most overlooked. My favorite song off the album is “Tantalized,” by far the most fast-paced and hard-edged song off the LP.

 

The Church: Before “Under the Milky Way”

Posted: September 29, 2014 in Alternative, Band Profiles, New Wave, Post-Punk
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One of my favorite songs from the early ‘80s was “The Unguarded Moment” by The Church. I remember seeing the video on MTV and promptly getting my tape recorder ready in hopes that it would be shown again (that’s how we did things before VHS recorders). There wasn’t much to the video, just the band performing the song on a studio soundstage with very little visual effects. It didn’t matter though, the guitar intro alone was enough to grab my attention. I heard little more from the band until their US success in the late ‘80s. It wasn’t until recently that I decided to track down more of their earlier work to see what else I might have missed.

Most people were first introduced to The Church through their 1988 hit “Under the Milky Way,” off the album Starfish. It was an international hit and peaked at #26 on the US charts. But within their native Australia, the group had been churning out hits since 1981. Formed in Sydney in 1980, the band had an infectious post-punk, guitar-heavy psychedelic sound. The group released their first album, Of Skins and Heart, in 1981 to good commercial success. The album was later repackaged and released in the US in 1982 as The Church. Their second album, 1982’s The Blurred Crusade, performed well in Australia but wasn’t released in the US, as it was considered not radio-friendly enough for North American audiences. By the ‘90s their sound had gone more mainstream, bordering on progressive rock. They continue to tour and record and will release their 25th studio album, Further/Deeper, in late 2014.

“The Unguarded Moment” was the second single released from their debut album, Of Skins and Heart. It peaked at #22 on the Australian charts and led one Rolling Stone critic to describe it as The Church’s “1981 jangling gem.”

 

The song “Dropping Names” is from the band’s third album, 1983’s Seance, which found the group gravitating to more of an atmospheric sound.