Forget Yourself
After 24 years of service, most bands are just waiting for their next reunion tour or VH-1 appearance to roll around. Not the Church. The Australian quartet's seventeenth album offers plenty of appeal for both longtime devotees and fans of newer acts likeBlack Rebel Motorcycle Club. Although nothing here feels immediate as their 1988 chart hit "Under the Milky Way," the 64-minute program as a whole is just as mesmerizing as their masterpiecesHeydayandStarfish. Awash in reverberating guitar fuzz and Steve Kilby's haunting vocals, the undulating opener "Sealine" exerts a pull as powerful as any undertow. "Telepath," which kicks off with a swath ofBeach Boys-style vocal harmonies, is one of several cuts where the intertwined guitars of Marty Wilson-Piper and Peter Koppes deliver a more modest--but no less captivating--variation on the grandeur peddled byU2's The Edge, while Kilby's sinewy bass lines add a touch of the sinister to "Reversal" and "I Kept Everything."--Kurt B. Reighley