The Church - Priest = Aura

The Church had a fairly big alternative/college radio hit with the glorious Under The Milky Way off the great Starfish album from 1988, the song still gets radio play and finds its way on to 80's compilations, which was the bands peak commercially but not artistically in my opinion. They followed that one up with Gold Afternoon Fix from 1990 that stuck to the formula of the previous record including using one of the same producers but wasn't quite as good. I have always liked this recording and have had it on cd ever since it came out.

It is a sprawling neo-psychedelic album featuring the tasty playing of guitarists Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes with Steve Kilbey's patented soft, drugged out vocals and stream of consciousness lyrics in a great widescreen soundscape that is perfect for this band. The drumming by Jay Dee Daugherty (original Patti Smith Group member!) on this recording is really propulsive and creative giving good energy to many of the songs. Not really a commercial album, with quite a few slow building epic songs like Aura or Ripple which are a couple of my favorite tracks and coincidentally the first two songs in order on the cd, although it does contain some more pop oriented songs like Feel also.


Buy it here.