When Robert Smith curated the Meltdown festival, in 2018, he invited the Australian psyche prog band The Church to perform alongside alternative household names like Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine and The Psychedelic Furs. While they weren’t as familiar to millions as other bands on the bill, they are undeniably influential.
The Sydney band are entering their fifth decade of making music. The Hypnogogue, believed to be their 27th studio album – it’s hard to keep count at this stage – puts them alongside the likes of The Fall and Guided By Voices in the heaving-back-catalogue stakes.
If you’ve never heard an album by The Church, The Hypnogogue is a pretty good place to start. It is unashamedly a concept album about a rock star who falls in love with a scientist who invents a device called the hypnogogue, which extracts thoughts from one’s head and transforms them into music.
While on paper this in danger of inducing some prospective listeners to run for the hills – and their punk collections – there is more than enough here to please anyone who appreciates David Bowie and Pink Floyd. The musicianship is impeccable, crystallising a new line-up of The Church that features the return of the guitarists Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes alongside Ian Hague of Powderfinger, while their talismanic frontman Steve Kilbey narrates in song the weird but wonderful story of the hypnogogue.
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While probably not one for the non-prog hearted, this is one of the strongest and most ambitious albums yet from one of Australia’s most enduring alternative-rock institutions.
