Univited Like The Clouds

The Church’s Steve Kilby must really, really hate Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and not like the usual “God, I can’t stand that putz in Coldplay” sort of thing, either. Yeah, he gets to you and me, with his goofy haircut, his holier-than-thou super-hot wife and his constant string of boasting about writing the greatest albums of his generation. But he must really stick in Kilby’s craw: He’s one-upped The Church’s only claim to fame.

Things were going just great until a little band called Coldplay had to come along and mess everything up. Admittedly, The Church hadn’t been riding high since 1988, when “Under the Milky Way” propelled the Aussies into the charts, but once Martin and his warmed-over U2 thing got going, there really wasn’t much hope. The Church, the onetime masters of grandiose schlock, had been out-cheesed by a gang of Brits with a Bono fetish.For nearly 20 years, Kilby led The Church’s revolving-door lineup to aim to be the most easily accessible epic-rock outfit ever. With one part jangle, one part off-the-shelf arena rock, The Church rode out the ’80s and ’90s as the rock act that was edgy enough to slip into alternative radio every now and then, but still nice enough to be played, at a reasonable volume, of course, at the office. It’s nice, it’s expansive and it’s totally devoid of any distracting emotional content.

With Uninvited Like the Clouds, The Church is still licking its wounds. Making another effort to score with pseudo-epic guitar pop, The Church returns with its trademark shimmer as the outfit throws the notion of succinct songwriting to the winds. What’s left is little more than overreaching layers of guitar and pompous melodies held together with just enough “Milky Way” nostalgia to play on the glory days. The Church strikes out to be grand and epic on Uninvited Like the Clouds but end up leaving listeners to wander through bloated arrangements. “Block” opens the album with a six-and-a-half minute arrangement that features no less than 957 guitar parts tossed on top of each other for the bigger-is-better approach. “Pure Chance” also surpasses the six-minute mark, dropping a slowly unfolding ballad that could be a lullaby in the Coldplay household. Other tracks like “Overview” and “Day Five” tap studio extras like piano to stretch out the long-winded arrangements.

The Church seems to confuse length with epic qualities, however. For all its longer songs, Uninvited Like the Clouds is never epic, mostly because the band lets its song structures go to hell as its songs tip past the four-minute mark. There’s a lot in each track – but a lot that should have been vetted out and streamlined during pre-prodcution.

It’s tough for The Church. As hard as it tries to be the world’s leading inoffensive alt-rock band, Coldplay has it licked. While that’s great news if you’re looking to soundtrack a gum commercial and can’t afford Coldplay’s scale, it’s a heck of a bummer for anyone who wants music with a pulse.

coldplaying.com