SEANCE

20 years ago when I had my "Indie phase" I liked to listen to this band together with their contemporaries like U 2, The Pretenders, The Stranglers, The Cure and so one. But in fact that was all Indie Rock for me and they never stood out of the others in my view. That's why I never concentrated on them actually; at that time I knew only their first two albums and sometime in the 90's I bought Gold Afternoon Fix which was that much disappointing for me that I gave them up somehow and lost interest. Until recently when I had some "nostalgic" moment and digged out the old CHURCH records (to remember "My God I was still bloody young at that time") this was the moment when I listened to the album Seance for the first time (21 years after its release). But I have to say I have not been impressed very much by it, sure their sound changed, became much more textured by using lush keyboard strings alongside the guitars. Maybe I would have been fascinated by it at that time but in fact I concentrated more on MARILLION in the 80's whose music can't be compared to this one since the one of CHURCH is in fact not intricate at all and sounds to my ears (that have listen already quite a lot of different stuff) more like some better atmospheric Indie Rock songs. Yes the lyrics are surely quite deep, but the main problem I have with this record are in fact the very weak drums that sound sometimes even like a drum machine. But anyway the rhythm section in this kind of music using most of the time the same simple rhythms is the reason for that it fails to catch my attraction.

For sure Fly, Disappear? or Electric Lash are very fine songs and in the poor 80's music scene THE CHURCH have been one of the few better bands but listening to it nowadays I've got to say they don't give me much and there are enough far more interesting bands at least for my taste. I will not try to describe each track in detail because for sure I could not do it half as good as my co-reviewer mainly for the reason it's not the type of music I'm much interested in.

So as a SUMMARY IMHO I can't see (or hear) any reason to compare this album to ones like Foxtrot or Time and a word and to call it a "masterpiece in progresssive rock" because simply its music is far to little intricate for this comparison. I think it deserves a solid 3 star rating (maybe one half more, but it's not possible) since I don't regard it as an essential one. But this is as usually just a matter of personal taste and favour.