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  Source: New Trouser Press Record Guide (New York, USA) 
   Issue: 2nd edition
    Date: May, 1985
 Subject: Biography - The Church
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THE CHURCH
  by Jim Green & Ira Robbins

Of Skins and Heart (Aus.Parlophone) 1981
The Church (Capitol/Carrere) 1982
The Blurred Crusade (nr/Carrere) 1982 & 1985
Seance (nr/Carrere) 1983 & 1985
Remote Luxury (Warner Bros./Carrere) 1984

Of all the comparisons the Australian foursome's music may conjure up,
the most helpful is perhaps that the Church is to the Beatles
(musically) and early Bowie (lyrically and vocally) what Dire Straits
is to Bob Dylan, circa 1966.  Such a simplification is less unfair than
you'd think; Marty Wilson-Piper explores the guitar territory first
mapped out by George Harrison and John Lennon but in greater detail and
with a more practiced hand, while Steve Kilbey chants/talks/ sings
articulate lyrics with a world-weary melancholy, like early Bowie, but
drier and more forceful.

The Church, consisting of most of the first Australian LP plus the best
of a subsequent double-45 release, has much to offer in its gorgeous
guitar sound-scapes and evocative verbal imagery, but The Blurred
Crusade displays dangerous tendencies toward confessional
long-windedness amid melodies stretched too thin. Seance never found
its way to America, but the band finally got a proper shot in this
country with Remote Luxury, an attractive, often Byrdslike album of
shimmering folk-rock hampered a bit by Kilbey's overly oblique lyrics.
The Church is capable of great beauty, but their appeal is sometimes
obscured by their pretensions.

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