Almost. From the nylon string guitar solo to the range of textures that, while distinct, always feel of a piece with all the others. The Church spent the months between their credible debut and their follow up learning dynamics on the road, honing the songwriting and learning to work with producers and engineers to arrive at this remarkable accomplishment. Everything sounds like it belongs on an album that has been thought about. But it's also warm and engagingly melodic throughout.
If the over extended intro to When You Were Mine gets irritating from the second listen you know at least that it will resolve into a mighty psychedelic riff, Kilbey's assured vocal and imagistic lyrics that suggest a love that survives many lifetimes, big drumming and atmosphere. If Marty Wilson-Piper's vocal on Field of Mars starts out swallowed the growing force of the music bears it on a tidal shift to a big plaintive call by the end.
Interlude gives us a break with its slower walking pace but intrigues with the woman's voice that speaks the first line of the verses as Kilbey sings them. Secret Corners seems to be a comparatively plain side ender but brings out a big finish.
Side two starts with a whimsical joke about letting inspiration in when it comes knocking before the rich acoustic rock of Just for You which surprises with an instrumental section led by a harpsichord. If A Fire Burns and To Be In Your Eyes feel like filler by this stage they are eclipsed by the epic You Took which ranges from soft but urgent harmonics on the bass and big guitar landscapes, hushed verses that play like cinematic dialogue and further adventures in guitary invention. By the time you get to the quiet finale of Don't Look Back, you feel like your watching the credits of a movie you'll tell everyone about.
Part of this is the work of a band reigning in their tendency to get songs out of jamming and finding arrangements that either took the length they gave them or demanded more compact packaging in the '60s-influenced singles they came to master. From the burdensome replaying of sections of Unguarded Moment which can make it a chore they go to leaving out those bits of information you can note and recall and move on. The effect is constant progression that even raises the lesser tracks to the standard of the whole.
The mix of pounding percussion and big guitars that surround a large and present vocal comes courtesy of producer Bob Clearmountain whose experience with the likes of Springsteen and The Rolling Stones as well as a lot of musicianship of his own delivered one of the most accomplished sounding records on the Australian scene in an era when we were still forgiving unimaginative arrangements and production for being real.
I was one of those folk and to this day maintain my post punk preference for interesting over professional. I still prefer the ramshackle passion of Neutral Milk Hotel to anything off the overproduced Nevermind or the Garbage debut. But The Church got away with the slickness because it sounded like they meant it. Where Of Skins and Heart works as a decent power pop platter it feels incomplete, undercooked, in need of edits on the tape but also on the songcraft and arrangement. Blurred Crusade sounds like it was born that way.
I was a sucker for the band from the time I saw the clip for Unguarded Moment on Sounds or Countdown. The paisley and the coolness, the double Strat attack (that would soon morph into Rickenbacker 12 and Strat) Steve Harley vocals and high harmonies just won. They played Brisbane a couple of times in 81 and 82 but every time I tried to get to see them they blew out, the venue doling out the money back to the upsidedown smiling fans. It felt like we'd never see them. Maybe they couldn't actually play and were really just miming it all. Whatever. Guff appeals when you're young and pissed off.
I finally did see them and more than once. The first was just after Blurred Crusade and they were fine. Not necessarily the band that broke the bank at Monte Carlo but good. They didn't sound like the record because the record was production and more production that any of us were used to with an Australian act. Dig the extra emphasis Kilbey put on his Brit roots in his singing and interviews. No one blamed him. It was a monocultural world out there and any difference was a relief.
What mattered was the music and it was rich and dynamic. The solos weren't cock rock pyrotechnics, they felt right the way they were and added to the weave. The lyrics didn't seem to mean anything but they sounded good and you could project whatever you cared to upon them. They looked '60s but not so '60s that they forbade themselves more contemporary tones in sound and couture. If you knew your Australian city stereotypes they also weren't things. Based in (but not from) Sydney they sounded nothing like Sunnyboys, The Hitmen or any of that Stoogey Detroit grunge. They weren't Melbourne with all that nasty theatre of coolty, tribal noise and dyed black locks. They certainly weren't Brisbane. They were just The Church.
Between their first album and this had come a double EP which loudly announced the course the band would nurture into bloom on this album. And then, having established themselves as revivers of the jingle jangle, changed course again (but only slightly) and would continue taking small side steps from the last thing: less Please Please Me to Sgt Pepper than Turn Turn Turn to Fifth Dimension. By the end of the '80s, while still recognisable in sound and vision, they had shifted from the easy path of Byrdsian gleam to the larger scope from tracks like You Took or Is This Where You Live, producing barnstormers like Tantalised and their global hit Under the Milky Way.
Until then, the look and sound worked a treat. As a young media student who saw things multiple times at the cinema, I dragged my sister and her husband to a screening of Starstruck which was supported by a short of two Blurred Crusade songs (Almost With You and You Took). They were all naff knights in armour, crystal balls, tarot cards and mystic lakeside settings but they were on a cinema screen, shot like a movie with giant sound. It was better than the movie.
This didn't alter the fact of so many other outfits providing music that was far more innovative and successful in offering alternatives to the old groaning freighter of rock music. It didn't raise the possibility of having more conventional rock music lift to those heights to make a tight and lasting union of creativity. The Church stuck to proven guns and fashioned an easier career out of being dependable. At the time that did look like they were being left doing the dogpaddle while less lucrative music was forging ahead. What remains now is the fact of the the sheer craft and confidence that reaches out beyond the judgement of fan-aged purists. Simply this: good songs stand and albums made of them will always taste good.
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