Sunday, June 7, 2009

Some Friends, Vol. 2

The last post came out a little too subjective, I think. I guess I can’t help it, since it was the 1st album I fell in love with. I’ll try to do better this time, talking less about my experiences with the music and more about the music itself

The Church – Forget Yourself

I wouldn’t try to convince anyone that this is the best album the Church ever put out, since 1) I haven’t heard all of them and 2) I don’t think it’s a useful discussion. Each of their albums (at least since Priest = Aura and I think even before that, althought others may argue otherwise) have been very different from each other. Each of them creates a “sound-world” that is unique and in which the album should be analysed.

In the present case, just looking at the cover while listening to the first 30 or so seconds of the album, we are already transported. The Church have always been great at incorporating elements from other genres and twisting them to fit their own, dream-rockish purpose. The entire album seams, indeed, to float in some sort of dreamspace, a feeling the distorted guitar ambience and feedback from the beggining of “Sealine” are greatly responsible for. When the slightly distorted drums come in and the structured part of the song starts, the music has already been lifted to a higher plane of existence. And it will remain their throughout the album, never ever ever coming down until the end of the last track. This is because of the great amount of effects, such as distortion, reverb, phasing, etc… the band uses in the album. The drums frequently have at least some type of processing, the vocals are also processed to fantastic effects and guitarists Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes achieve marvelous tones, that range from delightfully dreamy to agressive and harsh. The fact that some of the songs from this album would later be reworked by the band into acoustic versions, however, attests that the songs themselves, and not the effects used on them, are responsible for the album’s greatness

Despite the great amount of experimenting going on, the band never forgets about melody and structure. This may not be true for “Summer”, the last song here, but there, it is clear that the shear ambience is put in focus, and it complements the lyrics better than any melody or conventional structure possibly could, at least without reducing their meaning. With the exception of that song, however, all the others have “choruses” and each one has at least one melody or section that will stay in your head in the first 2 or 3 listens. Still, further listening will reveal the depth of the songs and bring to the fore melodies and details slightly hidden in the mix. In fact, one can spend years listening to this album and still not claim to know all about each song: they are endless.

Stevn Kilbey, the band’s singer and bass player, delivers lyrics that mantain the level of quality his listeners are used to. They are often misterious, and, coupled with the music, bring to mind a great number of different meanings. It’s hard to pin down the meaning of any given song, and different listenes definitely will have different interpretations, which is what makes these lyrics so wonderful. “Sealine” is probably about drug problems, but it can be seen as a song about any intense negative moment in one’s life. these wonderful misteries are also greatly present in “Telepath”, “See your lights”, “Appalatia” “June”, “Don’t You Fall” and in all the album’s songs actually. The difficulty in pining down the meanings, coupled with the dreamyness of the music, make for an extremely subjective experience.

This subjectiveness is one of the reasons this is such a great album. While the band does use melody, choruses, conventional structures, vocal harmonies and other “normal” pop music resources, they also incorporate an enormous ammount of characteristics from other musical styles, such as droning guitars, a few electronic sounds, huge ammounts of effects, a few well-placed classical instruments such as french horns and strings, etc… The guitar work is also fantastic and helps give each song it’s distinctiveness. There’s good variety in volume, not little enough to make the album same-sounding but not enough to make you change the volume on your player too much. The loudest track is the stormy “Lay Low”, which doesn’t go anywhere near ear-hurting intensity, and the softest “Maya”, which is also far from a whisper. But in terms of variety, there’s more than enough for some 3 or 4 albums. Each song brings ideas and sounds that the previous does not even hint at, and the album surprises the listener until the very end. The band’s sound on this album is extremely wide-ranged, and the performances are inspired and tight. The arrangements are simply marvelous and not one note in the album is wasted or without meaning. Few albums are as tightly-packed and bursting with ideas as this one, and even fewer can arrange these ideas into beautiful and striking musical moments. This album is of an extremely rare quality.

 

 

I fear that, having said all this, I might still have been unable to explain what makes this album one of my favorites. Check out the comments on this post and see for yourself. Any open-minded music listener who is willing to spend some time on this album will find much to enjoy and, possibly, music to play in his head as a soundtrack to his life’s great moments.

2 comments:

  1. http://rapidshare.com/files/88263973/Church__The_-_2003_-_Forget_Yourself_d1_.rar
    http://rapidshare.com/files/88285863/Church__The_-_2003_-_Forget_Yourself_d2_.rar

    2 parts

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  2. This album is definitly a soundtrack to life's great moments. I totally agree with you. And don't worry, I think that you manage to explain the album pretty well.

    ReplyDelete