release date: Sep. 8, 1998
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,66]
producer: The Church
label: Cooking Vinyl - nationality: Australia
*Track highlights: 1. "Anaesthesia" - 2. "Ricochet" - 3. "Louisiana" (official video, short version) - 4. "The Great Machine" - 5. "No Certainty Attached" - 6. "Tranquility" - 7. "Buffalo" - 8. "This Is It" - 9. "Another Earth" - 10. "Glow-Worm"
*[all tracks]
11th studio album by The Church (formally, it's the band's tenth but in retrospect Steve Kilbey regards it as the eleventh as he includes the '97 album, released under the name of The Refo:mation, as an album by The Church). The line-up here include Steve Kilbey, Peter Koppes, Marty Willson-Piper, and Tim Powles. The album basically follows the acclaimed Magician Among the Spirits from 1996; however, as Koppes left the band back in '92 after the release of Priest = Aura due to disagreements with Kilbey and Willson-Piper, the remainders continued until '97 as a trio of Kilbey, Koppes, and Tim Powles, who then released Pharmakoi / Distance-Crunching Honchos with Echo Units as The Refo:mation - a unit without Willson-Piper, which at the time made Kilbey suggest another band name. Subsequently, Kilbey, who had tired from internal struggles decided that The Church should release just one more album before finally disbanding. The band then embarked on a farewell tour in Australia, which was surprisingly quite successful, and the grand finale in Sydney convinced all members to give it another shot in the studio. For the first time, they found themselves in full control of the production assisted by the band's new drummer Tim Powles, and with powless at the helm as sound engineer and mixer, they combined the band's original strengths with a new distinctive set of traits. Powles is also mentioned in several places as the person who managed to shelve old internal tensions between Kilbey, Koppes, and Willson-Piper and have them all look ahead. The album was released in Australia on the label Festival Records, in Europe on Cooking Vinyl, and for the North American market by Thirsty Ear and True North. After the release, the band went on their first world tour for many years, which led the group to New York, where Kilbey was arrested and sentenced to community service for buying heroin.
The album generally garnered positive reviews and it remains one of the band's more coherent studio albums, which clearly wins for a special feeling for a whole cast rather than individual strong compositions. There are no fillers and the 'featured highlights' above showcase all ten tracks.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
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| org. Australian cover |
