MUSIC REVIEW

The Hypnogogue: The Church’s Ghost in the Machine

By Robert Dean Lurie

This piece was first published in Generation Riff and is Robert’s first guest-writing appearance on that site.

Robert Dean Lurie is a writer and musician based in Tempe, Arizona. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and is the author of ‘Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years,’ ‘We Can Be Heroes: The Radical Individualism of David Bowie,’ and ‘No Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and The Church.’

I. Here comes the future according to me

The Church’s The Hypnogogue is weird, wonderful, and relentlessly hypnotic, a major statement from a band that is well into its fifth decade and ought to have nothing left to prove.

I offer that takeaway in consideration of readers who may be pressed for time. Life speeds up, don’t you know? And not everyone has the bandwidth for a digressive essay ostensibly about the Church. Is The Hypnogogue good? And would it be of interest to general music listeners who might not be familiar with the long and twisty saga of this veteran Australian band? Yep and yep! See you at the shows.

Now, the rest…