The Church
HeyDay

THE REVIEW

What a country, Australia! We fell in love with it by discovering the first films of Peter Weir ("Picnic at Hanging Rock", especially), reading the fascinating text by Bruce Chatwin, "The Songlines", and listening to this magnificent work by the Church in the year of our Lord 1985. At the time, the band had already released four other commendable works, among them "Remote Luxury", but the freshness and vitality present in "HeyDay" make it resemble a sparkling debut.

It starts with "Mirrh" and, suddenly, you find yourself amidst the endless spaces of the mysterious Australian plains. An essential contribution to the credible suggestion is given by the voice of the leader, Steve Kilbey, warm and with an unmistakable timbre.
The guitars of Martin Wilson-Piper and Pete Koppes take center stage in "Tristesse", a track with subtle and iridescent tones, placing it in the best pop tradition.
"Already Yesterday", the most Beatles-esque track on the album, soaked in nostalgia, could have been a hit if the world were not as it is.
With "Columbus", perhaps the most immediately engaging track, our musicians show unsuspected grit and know-how in rock.
But the surprises are not over: in "Happy Hunting Ground", an instrumental piece of great suggestiveness, violins and winds appear above a bed of hypnotic percussion and sound effects, tastefully arranged by Kilbey himself (author also of some interesting and unrecognized solo albums) and by Peter Walsh.
The best, however, is yet to come. With the triad "Tantalized", "Disenchanted", and "Night of Flight", the "Church" offers us the best of its repertoire. All the mentioned musical elements blend together, creating a tasteful "pastiche", while allowing each element to prevail from time to time.

What characterizes the music of the Church, however, is its strong identity, although they haven't invented anything new, and the putative fathers, psychedelia and sixties in the first place, are always well recognizable. It is perhaps precisely their awareness of being "dwarfs" standing on the shoulders of "giants" that makes them preferable to other similar bands of that period, undoubtedly more pretentious but less talented.

The album elegantly closes with "Youth Worshipper" and "Roman", completing a work that is worth (re)discovering. It is said that to the notes of "Night of Flight", some, even in our boreal hemisphere, have managed to glimpse the Southern Cross. Try to believe it.