Uninvited, Like The Clouds

So I’ve listened to the new album for a week now. The first track, like no other SK recording I can think of at this second, starts with voice first and then the rock orchestra winds up behind him like a big truck with no brakes, quietly at first, slowly from the top. I picture Steve in his hat and shades walking through Bondi Beach traffic, negotiating pedestrians and taxis, sort of like that Bittersweet Symphony video by The Verve. It’s hot and there’s sea breeze “…magnets and runes…” and his life is flashing before his, and now our eyes in the song, with little breaks looking at odd merchandise in windows “…well I got a fever…” Steve sings to us from the other side of the glass. We’re inside. But the song picks up and it builds and builds and builds again. Block is Steve in Kilbey rap mode at his best. Maybe even showing ‘em how it’s done. Bringing art to what has been a nearly artless form…but I digress. In one scene he sits behind the glass with his easil and brush requesting, “…if you could all just hold still…” This song is an autobiographical version of Feel from PA in some ways. Feel is vague. Block is specific. And then the first of several bluzy rock solos as we jam to the end. Now we’re spending a week in Australia.

We wandered looking for the café where Steve writes his blog, we give up and sit in the one that we went in earlier. It’s almost dinnertime but you’ll have another coffee anyway. You had breakfast at lunchtime anyway. Jet lag. Suddenly the mental Block is cleared with feedback and we check our e-mail with something more corporeal playing. “You’re money is so pretty…” we look up disoriented, “this isn’t the church I know!” Why are we checking e-mail! Look around, the evening is so magical! String chaos theory, anything can happen now. We’re either dreaming, or in a video, a movie maybe, but the band is there. There’s a verse/chorus/solo upbeat rock song with something more playing in our heads. Don’t be too sophisticated here, just listen, it feels good. Great mix of guitars slithering across each other and backing vocals that work.

Something ominous has entered with brown tones of anxiety. The girls exit the runways and go off into the back. Black light chunka chunka chunka bass line and there’s the dabble and meddle melody. The café has become a nightclub at dusk. Something Sci-fi is on the big-screen but we can’t quite make it out, looks a little like an old Peter Fonda movie, the trip or something. Backseat effects in the rack and we’re open to guitar solo’s and 8th note riffs now! Rich with melody this album, you even find yourself humming the guitar lines.

Piano bar next. We’re wandering through town. Jazz. People drink martinis in this place. Steve’s loosening up now, smokes some jazz, sings some jazz. After his near run in with needle and space, he’s giving us advice and observations on life in this song. He’s being blunt at times. You might even think for a second he’s scolding someone, something, us. Cool deep room reverb guitar fills on this track, and the Ivory Lane loops and dots to keep us tranced. Then we outro with a wailing Marty tremolo solo. He was live on stage in the studio I would say...if ya know what I mean.

That easy keyboard (or is it a keyboard?) intro really makes your ears PERK, reminds me of something from Leave Them All Behind (Ride), but then we get the more familiar swirling guitar textures. In fact it’s very familiar, we’re back home in Ohio! Other strings add and layer and we have something quite cloud like, but the white and fluffy kind. This is a song for Holly I think, lyrically. It just strikes me as such. Could be I’m wrong, it’s actually about anything you want isn’t it? This has less melody than the other tracks but makes up for it in textures.

Marty sings now. I love this song. Apparently about getting hung up on somebody with power over you that you know is unhealthy but you can’t resist. I had a run in with a girl this time last year that lasted only a month, but she really sunk her talons into my neck. She made me feel like a little boy. She was suddenly done with me, and hell if I didn’t think every day for 6 months after that that she would, comeback for me tomorrow. Cool slide (steel? ) guitar fills which foreshadow the coming Floyd.

Ok, so Us and Them was a suggestion for a PF cover, I kind of thought that was a little funny. Now I don’t so much. I picture Church doing mostly pre-darkside songs. But this song is us heading back toward Sydney with the band days later, stopping in that psychedelic martini place again. What are we, their busdriver? Are we dreaming? Are we even there at all? Are we watching a documentary delivered as a musical? Breathing memory heavy chloroform walls for sure though. Cool décor really. Stars and dim lights. Solar system by the galactic ocean theme, we’re alfresco. I like the line, “…I read you’re novel, the names were switched…” Suddenly you’re just walking on the beach listening on headphones and thinking of how you’re so far from home.

Alright, now Peter’s song enter’s our head. I like this song, but it’s the only one on this album I would change a bit. The string-voice keyboard line is plastic sounding, and too high in the mix, and the cinematic fugue at the end is over the top in my opinion, but the lyrics are cool and weird. The sepia sun has come up in grayscale. The movie continues.

My favorite song on this record, at this time, besides Block maybe. Real Toggle Action. Steve lyrically confirms we’re in a film finally. I think it’s really cool the way it’s slow-core funk or something, Terra Novacaine in a deep-space porno maybe. Deep Space Blues! Lots of cool colors mixing too. Peter’s guitar keyboard tricks, the ‘60s flavor, the chanting, the space slides. I always liked that second track from Jammed too, now it's all grown up and nearly naked.

Toward Untoward now in that Q. n A. trick from ref:0mation. Is he saying, “Metaphysical chickens” in this song? Oh, check-ups I guess. I really like this one too - elevator music on another planet, a far more intelligent civilization of course. Steve is giving us advice again. He’s our bodhisattva sometimes. Big brother, dad, rockstar, blogfiend. The energy behind the acoustic and the melody are royal and kind, and I can’t help but smile in spite of the down-boy-lyrics which seem to be telling us to stand in the mirrored corner.

Day 5 down under now. Ameri-centric perspective. Actually we’re not sure where we are. We assumed it was Australia. Everything was so different, and The Church was there. Now it’s almost as if we we’re far off in the future or on another planet, but it’s just a film that sucked us in right? Or was it. A secret colony, a sleeping planet. And then the drug wears off with a punch, pull off your silly man suit, and exit quietly, suddenly. Almost the coolest song on the album.

Now you fly home uninvited. You’re high again, but only above the clouds. You're not even sure where home is. You look out at the wing as it seems to shake a bit. You put the tape in that Steve gave you in that lounge. You forgot it till now, stuffed deep in your carry on. The tape you thought you were dreaming. The film that wasn’t real. The cafe inside, but under the stars. You press play, the jet banks, and he explains what happened. He details the whole thing with ambiguous precision. The mission impossible tape, after the mission, self-created, songs to go.

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