The Blurred Crusade

The Church’s second album is where everything fully started to gel for the band in terms of a full-length effort, with returning coproducer Bob Clearmountain helping create a sharper, stronger sound to capture equally strong elegant rock songs from stop to start. The opening one-two of “Almost With You” and “When You Were Mine,” the latter with a remarkable instrumental break, sets the tone, Steve Kilbey’s contemplative voice perfectly suiting them, while the penultimate “You Took” is a marvelous, propulsive epic in miniature.

There’s a clarity and sharpness to The Church’s second album, as though they’re sloughing off the effects of their surprise hit single from 1981, “The Unguarded Moment”. If that risked positioning them as New Wave one-hit wonders, The Blurred Crusade saturates the spectrum with psychedelic hues and proves the group’s songs are far more multi-layered and richer than previously hinted. It’s top-loaded with two great singles – “When You Were Mine” and the blissful thrill of “Almost With You” – but the depths hidden in songs like the epic “You Took”, or the folksy jangle-mantra of “Just For You” suggest there’s a lot more here than simple sixties pop retreads.