Remote Luxury

Not an album so much as a repackaging of two separate EPs called Persia and Remote Luxury – a later CD issue would include the earlier Sing-Songs EP as well – Remote Luxury in full captures a strong 1984 for the group, now fully settled into their sound and peeling off one quietly strong 1980s psych rock number after another. Steve Kilbey’s sometimes bemusing puns surface too – thus “Constant In Opal” – but the music on tracks like that and “Shadow Cabinet” are unimpeachable, while Marty Willson-Piper gets two leads on “10000 Miles” and “Volumes.”

A compilation of two Australian EPs (Persia and Remote Luxury), pulled together for the American market, this album has The Church sounding a little lost – perhaps at a crossroads, after the confusions of Seance. But The Church in retreat are still better than most bands at their peak, and there’s a number of classic Church songs here. The blazing “Constant In Opal” rides a stinging e-bow guitar drone into an arrangement of unpredictable yet tightly interwoven parts; “No Explanation” is tender, laden with pellucid 12-string acoustic guitar; and “Shadow Cabinet” is The Church at their most mysterious, Kilbey’s lyrics at their obscurantist best, while Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes spell rainfall with their chiming guitars.