****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
First, get this straight: this isn't country star Eric Church, and for those who only know this great band from "Under The Milky Way", they, or you, have been missing out on one of rock's most enduring and almost indescribable outfits. 26 albums in now, The Church has been lucky to enjoy a devoted and large enough world wide audience to keep their music going strong. That is important because as those who can attest will tell you, this Australian band could and should have been in the same league (they are, musically) as Pink Floyd and other legendary bands known for stretching boundaries and creating timeless music that I seriously doubt will ever sound dated or stale. "Man Woman Life Death Infinity" has some aquatic lyrical themes, and musically it's a real delight to hear them create a much more spacious and atmospheric album this time around. While recent material is top shelf stuff too, for a while the band was heavier, with more distortion and walls of guitars, such as "Forget Yourself". Long time fans will be really happy to find this album is more in line with some of their cleaner and still spacey earlier albums, such as "Remote Luxury", an '80's pop album that still sounds fantastic today, "Heyday", perhaps their richest orchestral sounding album, "Starfish", and "Priest = Aura". In fact, there is little if any distortion on this album, replaced by the clean yet ethereal guitars and plenty of keyboards augmenting long time leader/bassist/vocalist Steve Kilbey's incredible smooth baritone. Ian Hauge has been a fine replacement for departed co-founder Marty Willson-Piper. To be frank, Willson-Piper had a bit of a tendency for pomposity - "The Ritz" from "Magician Among The Spirits" was the worst song they ever did. Not that he wasn't an essential part of the band, but Peter Koppes and Hauge work so seamlessly they are sometimes very difficult to separate. This shimmering undulating music is as good as it gets. Every cut is essential, the sonic tapestry truly in lock step with a higher presence, and in a perfect world, "Man Woman Life Death Eternity" would be in everybody's album collection.
