The Hypnogogue

Its perhaps hard to believe that four decades into their career, long-running cosmic troubadours the Church have never recorded a full-on concept album. Its a psychedelic tradition that lead singer/bassist Steve Kilbey has explored elsewhere, as on 2021s Jupiter 13, one of several sci-fi-inspired collaborations with electronic musician Martin Kennedy. That said, pretty much every album by the Church has had the sustained atmospherics and Baroque goth drama of a Dayglo gatefold LP. Its an evocative vibe that Kilbey and the band push ever skyward on their monolithic and literate 26th album, 2023s The Hypnogogue. Opening with a rainbow-hued gurgle of what sounds like a spacecraft touching down on "Ascendence," the album doesnt so much wash over you as hover like a cosmogonic stone temple from which each song emanates. Technically speaking, the story at the heart of The Hypnogogue is an enigmatic one, set in a dystopian future world in 2054 in which Kilbey plays a man at the edge of time, or perhaps his avatar dreaming of that mans past? Its all kind of woozy and opaque, yet endlessly intriguing. Central to the album is the title track, a paean to the opiate nature of AOR itself when donning a pair of oversized headphones to listen to both sides of a spinning black disc was a metaphor for, and perhaps a gateway to, even darker avenues of oblivion. Kilbey sings, "As you went under into unknown/Remember the music pulled out of your head/Piano trickling into the cans/Insulating guitars, reptilian bass/Kick in your face, the snare in your heart." Snare you they do, crafting slow-burning anthems where Kilbeys hushed, late-afternoon David Bowie croon is framed by crescent-moon piano, rocket-engine percussion, and sun-flared electric guitars. Later, they rip into the echoey "Antarctica," a song that recaptures all the womb-like goth intensity and Byrdsian sparkle of their classic work on albums like Of Skins and Heart, The Blurred Crusade, and Starfish. Few bands of their day, and especially those of the post-punk 80s, are as consistent as the Church at writing songs that sound like more sophisticated and mature versions of their classic material. Its a sentiment Kilbey seems to ponder on "Succulent," singing, "I am the voice in another room/Entombed in the dead part of your heart/Voice from a gloomy future/Voice from a gloomy past." Its a tantalizing moment that feels like Kilbey and the Church are folding time and their own career into themselves, something they do throughout The Hypnogogue. ~ Matt Collar