Magician Among The Spirits
by The Church

REVIEWS and COMMENTS


Though inexplicable, the cover of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel's fruity Ritz pretty much sets the tone here, being fey, pretentious and dated – qualities that the rest of this album seems unusually intent on honouring, with only Comedown and Ladyboy possessing anything resembling the force or dynamics of this band's excellent earlier work.

The opening, Welcome, is more problematic: not just a literal rewrite of The Beloved's Hello (a list of famous names, punctuated by the title), but a transparent aesthetic strategy. As if to say, hey, look, we're terribly learned fellows (namechecking Camus, Scipio Africanus, Ogden Nash), but we're also pop culture mavens (citing Johnny Thunders, Jack Lord, Magilla Gorilla). Jeez, ain't this highbrow/lowbrow thing just crazy?

The rest cruises along lazily, apparently unaware of its own lack of commitment. The three instrumentals sound like they were taken from a '70s surf doco, and The Further Adventures of the Time Being proves yet again that Marty Willson-Piper shouldn't really be allowed near a microphone.

★★ (2 stars)

If you take their fan club's word, there are about 20,000 people in the world who will buy anything released by Sydney-based band The Church. Those people believe singer-songwriter Steve Kilbey and Marty Willson-Piper can do no wrong. Fair enough.

However, there are other people who were never strongly affiliated, whose memories stretch back as far as Unguarded Moment in the early '80s and, more recently, Under the Milky Way. These folk might be wondering if The Church can do anything right.

Magician Among the Spirits, the latest offering from The Church, is an extension of the ideas driving their previous offering Sometime Anywhere – guitar-based psychedelic rock unconstrained by bourgeois notions like, well, melody. The title is taken from a Harry Houdini biography.

There are some numbers more accessible than the first couple of tracks, but they don't hold the attention. Normally, sensible people would keep away from an album with instrumental tracks called Grandiose, Romany Caravan and Afterimage. But Kilbey and Willson-Piper are geniuses, right? Unique Australian artists, right? That many fans couldn't be wrong – could they?

THIS is not the last Church album, let's get that straight right away. Steve Kilbey said so just the other day. This is one hell of a Church album: let's also get that straight. Forget all the garbage going on about Magician Among The Spirits being pretentious, dated and fey; disappointing, lacking gut and imagination. The rantings of a few scribes who would hold rock in a holding pattern named grunge forever or guitar pop. Remember that most invention and creation is strongly resisted, particularly by those who can't embrace its scope, and are threatened by its lack of reverence for the "three-minute" burst. Rock music would have died decades ago if anybody had paid much attention to such drivel.

The very nature of rock is to celebrate the variegated tree of its heritage, source its roots and grow into the future unhindered by restriction. At its very best - particularly on the 14-minute neo-tribal ambient art title track, the aptly-titled "Grandiose" where The Church ascend a gorgeous Marty Willson-Piper chordal pattern to uncharted atmospheres that echo heavenly and choral before riding a dirty beast of a lick through far space, "It Could Be Anyone" that develops off the quasi-tribal psychedelic hauntings of Sometime Anywhere and the fitting, poignant and simple piano finale "Afterimage" - Magician Among The Spirits raises the spectre of a band who reach brilliant new horizons where even the imagined potential is left asunder in the group's most coherent full-bodied album in many a year.

Reuniting the core trio of Kilbey, Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes with drummer Tim Powles, Magician is almost classical in scope - an art of rock for the '90s. The sound and vision is vast as Kilbey takes the many threads of Sometime Anywhere and ties them in a sound sculpture amid which his love of his ambience is offset by the band's continued tread into the tribal, their inherent ability to shape the core of rock - harmony and melody - into a cliche-free oscillating power that floods on the wings of electricity and pounds with rhythmic thunder - anima and soma united in the celestial and cerebral. And for purists there's the finest Church guitar rock jangle since "Almost With You" – the symphonic "Comedown," an immeasurable skein of majestic hook, riff and melody, footloose and fancy free, string-washed and buried in omnipotent brilliance.

The Church, 10 albums and 16 years down the track, are virtually peerless and Magician Among The Spirits stands as both a stunning statement of a band in the full flush of invention and a dynamic expression of contemporary rock.

(9.7)

Over the course of two decades, The Church has released mystical, melodic classics such as 1988's "Starfish" and last year's "Hologram of Baal," but the records in between these solid outings have been spotty. "Magician Among the Spirits Plus Some," a reissue (with bonus tracks) of the record the Church made prior to "Baal," falls into the "nice try but not quite" category. "Comedown" is chiming, driving pop in the mode of classic early-'80s Church, and "Romany Caravan" is perhaps the most sensual instrumental the band has ever recorded, but the rest of the disc is mediocre, hippie-ish meandering that will appeal to only the most hard-core Church worshipers.

I really love the mood of this record. The title track is one of my very fav church songs. Plus I always love any church record that has instrumentals. If you like a twilight vibe get this one.

Avoiding falling into excesses and nonsenses (that many groups make to look arty), one of the bravest leaps forward that any band in rock history has ever made. A pity the guys thought it was enough (+ the circumstances), but it doesn't matter if the masterpieces to follow were Pharmakoi... and Hologram Of Baal.

I don't know why, but I just can't get into this album.

There are some great tracks here, but all too often I turn away and I can't figure out why...

Welcome is not as bad as people make it out to be, with Steve's name dropping...hell, Billy friggin' Joel makes a piece of slop called "We Didn't Start the Fire" which is nothing but and he's considered a legend? PLEASE!

Comedown is the best song on this album, not just for it's commercial value, but for the arrangement and performance. GOD this song rocks!!! They seem to be having FUN on this track as opposed to the melancholy of the rest of the album and this is why I love it so much. It's great to have a band that enjoys the atmosphere and gloom especially when they make such beautifully haunting melodies out of that type of subject matter, but when that kind of band opens up and ROCKS for over four and a half minutes, it is something to behold! Masterpiece material.

The rest of the album is tepid and I consider it a letdown of sorts. Never really grabbed me. The title track, Magician Among the Spirits is a great song but way too long and wears out it's welcome after about ten minutes. Strange, considering it is the band's "long songs" that usually grab my attention.

Maybe I am not being fair, in that I haven't really listened to this album enough times for it to grow on me, but I just think there is something missing...Peter Koppes maybe? He "guest stars" for a few tracks and he is missed on others. He wasn't even on Sometime Anywhere, but that album still worked.

Magician has sadly few tricks up its sleeve though...

It's hard to like something new or different when you are comfortable with what you have been listening for a long period of time. So when something like MATS comes along, it is for sure the Church long time fans are going to have a hard time swallowing it. The reason I am writing this review is because in a quick introduction I made to a friend, of the whole Church studio material, this one was the one that made the most impression on her, go figure!

Lets start by saying that this is the most organic, eclectic and experimental record the band has made (musically), if you count that Peter Koppes only appeared as a guest. One of the factors that made this record so inaccessible for a lot of people is that it has an almost permanent mood, so if you are not in THAT mood its going to be difficult for someone to digest the whole in one session. This is definitely a late night sedator; and I mean it in a good way. Just listen to the 14 minutes title song and you will know what I am talking about. The constant use of violin is one of the trademarks of the production and may be a way to compensate the lack of PK's guitar in some parts. In my opinion what makes this album what it is in first place is the musical approach, and second, the sometimes-kind-of Tribal drumming of Tim Powles. Listen well to this record compared to other Church productions and you will get the idea, maybe Day of the Dead from SE does have the same vibe, but that's it. It's kind of like TP is using his drum kit as African war drums. It is more evident from It Could Be Anyone to Romany Caravan. I think this is TP strongest playing with The Church yet. Marty's guitar sound is also kind of unique, like the delicate acoustic guitar in Romany Caravan, that is an outstanding atmospheric instrumental and the lovely Spanish guitar in the dream-like instrumental, Afterimage (in this one I almost hear Sade singing).

In the electric guitar area, Welcome has the catchiest riffs followed by the power chords of Comedown, the "commercial one" for some people. I think Marty is very loose in this album, creatively and technically, maybe because he is the owner of the guitar show here. I dare to say that I like, creatively speaking, much better what he has done in MATS than in his solo work.

The lyrics are good, but nothing that stands out. I mean for Church standards, that's their fault for spoiling us. But I don't think this album was lyric-oriented, I think the singing is more like another layer in the music that blends for you to feel it and not to sing along and give meaning to something. Well it's hard not to sing along in Welcome and Comedown. All in all MATS is a very good album. Not my favorite but yet a very special one, I kind of transport my self into a fantasy world with strange creatures in it when I hear it. The secret to appreciate this album is to listen to it with an open mind, forget the other material, and just listen to it as if it was a different band. If this would have been from another artist I assure you everybody would have talked about it as something remarkable. But again it's their fault for spoiling us with such great music for all this time ;)