The Church - Man Woman Life Death Infinity (2017)
- Violettown.Church
- Oct 7, 2017
- 5 min read
Updated: May 7, 2019
Man Woman Life Death Infinity is the 25th album by the Australian psychedelic rock band The Church released in October 2017.
The album was the second by the band to feature the lineup of Steve Kilbey, Peter Koppes, Tim Powles and Ian Haug. Haug joined the band in 2013 following the departure of longtime guitarist Marty Willson-Piper and, according to Powles, was "surprised to discover how much improvisation was involved in the writing process" of the band; Powles went on to note that Man Woman Life Death Infinity was a unique record for the band because prior to recording, they set aside time to structure the songs instead of relying largely upon improvisation during the recording process.
REVIEWS:
AllMusic: 4/5 - Read review - "The amazing thing about Man Woman Life Death Infinity, as with much of The Church's post-2000s work, is that it sounds utterly fresh, even as it's in keeping with their early albums. Rather than backing away from the gothy, new wave psychedelia of their youth, just as they revisited The Blurred Crusade, here they've embraced that aesthetic and imbued it with the emotional maturity and poetic gravitas that comes with their decades-long space rock journey."
PopMatters: 9/10 - Read review - "Not a moment of Man Woman Life Death Infinity is wasted. Sure, it takes a good two minutes for "Submarine" to get started, but no fan of psychedelia, Krautrock, post-punk, Gothic rock, or ambient would consider those two minutes "wasted". To these fans, those two minutes of guitar noise as a key ingredient, just like the 12-string rolls of "Before the Deluge" or the ghostly reverb of "For King Knife". It's not easy proclaiming the latest release by a veteran band to be one of their best, especially when their long career is already speckled with many peaks."
MusicToEat:- Read review - "..but it’s the tracks that follow that album opener that blast this album into rarified air. “Submarine” with it’s interstellar (interocean?) electronic guitar effects like whale calls from a distant planet, and “Undersea” (did I mention this is a water album?) where the band sounds reinvented and with a different kind of melodicism in the chorus than their norm. A bit of jangle on tracks such as “Before the Deluge” create subtle links to their 80s heyday."
Red Dirt Report: - Read review - "Kilbey has long been a fearless lyricist and paints surrealistic pictures in your mind, while casting his aural spell in a way only Kilbey can. Their last album, Further Deeper, was a strong record, but Man Woman Life Death Infinity seems to be that next step on a journey that has proven to be quite remarkable, as far as the shelf-life of rock bands go. The creativity is definitely still there, and then some."
Smells like Infinite Sadness: - Read review - "Man Woman Life Death Infinity holds a mood both melancholic and mysterious. There is a subtle angst in the world-weary jangle of I Don’t Know How I Don’t Know Why and the overcast and haunting Something Out There is Wrong. The latter track in particular has the inky noir aspects of band’s dark masterpiece Priest=Aura."
Get Ready to Rock: 5/5 - Read review - "For Church fans this is an absolute must. Many lamented the departure of Marty Wilson-Piper but Ian Haug has stepped out of his shadow with aplomb and Steve Kilbey’s writing has stepped up a notch from recent outings – bringing back that wonderful atmospheric sound that made us fall in love with them all those years ago. It gets better with every play and is without doubt their finest for some time."
The Fire Note Online: 3.5/5 - Read review - "“Crocodiles and allegations” begins “A Face In Film,” which rhymes nicely with “Palpitations” and “League of Nations,” but if you need more than that you’re not going to get any help from Kilbey. These songs, like much of The Church’s catalog, are all about the feeling created, the immediate, visceral response to the sounds, which remains to engaging to these ears, and still makes a fun connection, and the words float by like images outside a train window."
Cryptic Rock: - Read review - "it opens dramatically with the slow, ambient-sounding “Another Century,” whose textured layers and rustic plucks of guitar tracks conjure a sonic image of another time. This is then followed by the undulating, hypnotic oceanic swirl of “Submarine.” “For King Knife” is a change of mood and time, as its melodies and overall feel hark to the sunny, upbeat Pop girl groups of the 1960s, albeit still glazed with mild psychedelia. “Undersea” is a slight ascent in tempo whose rhythm swims relaxingly; a standout with its backing choral voices and chiming strings, reminiscent of 1985’s Heyday, in particular “Already Yesterday.”
Glide Magazine: 7/10 - Read review - "So, as with the best work of the Church, such as the twenty-five-year-old Priest=Aura, the all-enveloping rapture the foursome conjures up always remains grounded in some semblance of realism; in 2017, where else would something so ominous as “Something Out There Is Wrong” come from? Still, much of the force of gravity within Man Woman Life Death Infinity arises from the comparative brevity of the ten tracks: the band’s playing is consistently tight in the roughly three and a half to four and a half minute duration of each."
The Music Trust eZine: - Read review - "Whatever it is, that is working too; the hypnotic refrains of Undersea, the guitar interplay of Before The Deluge and I Don’t Know How I Don’t Know Why, which is delivered with the same ominous grandeur which graced the best-selling song in the Church repertoire. Bands usually don’t enjoy looking over their shoulders. They probably didn’t when they wrote I Don’t Know How either but something that was deep in the DNA has surfaced again. You can trace it back to Under the Milky Way."
INTERVIEWS:
HighWire Days: - Under The Hollywood Stars with Steve Kilbey of The Church
Read interview - "Another magical night under the grand and tumultuous stars of Tinseltown, where a meet and greet with The Church was taking place before the main concert event. This would occur on the rooftop of the iconic Fonda Theater on Hollywood Blvd, at that mystical hour when the sun descends and the stars emerge to enrapture and enlighten. Now 24 albums in with a vibrant 25th on the horizon, the expansively titled Man Woman Life Death Infinity presents a band at their most ambitious and inspired."
Australian Musician: Tim Powles : The making of Man Woman Life Infinity’ - Read interview - "In a music business which has become so transient, fad-focussed and harder to make a buck, the idea of sustaining a long recording career for most artists is an improbable dream. It makes the recent release of iconic Australian band The Church’s 26th album, Man, Woman, Life, Death, Infinity an even more remarkable achievement. For nearly four decades, the Steve Kilbey-led ethereal rock band has continued to create high quality, interesting and engaging music without ever catering to trends or anyone else’s creative needs bar their own."
Reverb Online: Steve Kilbey (The Church): Read interview - "Vastly unpredictable, elemental, mystic, spooky, weird, something quite peculiar – no Australian band incites such valiant efforts from punters and journalists alike, in describing THE CHURCH. Ahead of the band’s Starfish 30th Anniversary tour in Australia, STEVE KILBEY spoke with Reverb about the album’s longevity, his creative process and the surrealism of his public life."
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