A funny thing happened on the road to nostalgia for the Church. Theytook a detour and became relevant.
The initial route was a familiar one. After slowly building anaudience, they scored a Top 30 hit, "Under the Milky Way," severalalbums into their career. The pressure to repeat their success nearlydestroyed the band. Last summer they played Showcase Live, a venue at afootball stadium's complex whose main selling point to suburbanaudiences is vast amounts of free parking, key for acts that are justtrading on their long-past glories. The typical chain of events forsuch bands is that, if they even bother to record new material, it isat best forgettable but provides an excuse to tour. At worst, itsquanders their legacy.
But that isn't what happened to the Church. The band is celebrating it30th anniversary with a special tour. They deserved better than thenostalgia circuit room they played in Foxboro last year and got it withSomerville's Arts at the Armory on April 21. The gimmick of the tour isthat they play one song from each album in reverse chronological order,starting with 2009's Untitled #23.The surprise to casual fans is that their newer material is worthy ofboth the band and the audience. Admittedly, the group have winnowedtheir following, but this was a crowd who was in it for the long haul,not the ones who would be disappointed that they didn't faithfullyrecreate "Reptile" from its Starfishincarnation.
In honor of the occasion, they provided a program highlighting theircareer, including a page devoted to each album and concluding with aninventory of their career, cataloging everything from the number ofconcerts played to the number of overdoses. Combining theirbetween-song banter, mostly from Steve Kilbey but with the otherschiming in, and the written materials about their releases, the fullnarrative emerged. Their label largely ignored them in the early '80sin favor of acts like Loverboy. They eventually hit pay dirt and sold abunch of albums, but that same success tore the band apart. Theyeventually regained their footing as the '90s progressed, withguitarist Peter Koppes rejoining the band, Tim Fowles settling inbehind drums and the band finding a new creative freedom, in part fromshedding expectations. They've weathered the failure of several indielabels by ultimately creating their own imprint.
It was a journey through their history, but they chose to notnecessarily retrace their steps. They billed it as an intimate space,which manifested itself as a very casual atmosphere with no electricguitars. Since two of their albums were built around reinterpretationsof their own songs, they were hardly married to their past. Forexample, they stripped away the layers of "Almost Yesterday." "TheUnguarded Moment" felt like a Velvet Underground cover song."Invisible" took the train theme of its lyrics as the basis for itstempo variations, speeding up then slowing down like a training pullinginto the station.
They broke the proceedings into two sets then returned for two encores.For their first encore, they offered up the Smashing Pumpkins song"Disarm" as a thank you and response to theircover of "Reptile." Theyfollowed it up with "Space Saviour" from Untitled #23that was so hypnotic it practically induced seizures and left audiencedrowning in puddles of their own drool. They wrapped up the eveningwith "Grind;" Marty Willson-Piper peppered it with Led Zeppelin-worthyfat riffs, but the rendition also lived up the song's own lyrics of"jangled decay." The band proved themselves worthy of the 30thanniversary celebration.
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