Credits:

The Church

Its perhaps hard to believe that four decades into their career, long-running cosmic troubadours the Church have never recorded a full-on concept album. Its a psychedelic tradition that lead singer/bassist Steve Kilbey has explored elsewhere, as on 2021s Jupiter 13, one of several sci-fi-inspired collaborations with electronic musician Martin Kennedy. That said, pretty much every album by the Church has had the sustained atmospherics and Baroque goth drama of a Dayglo gatefold LP. Its an evocative vibe that Kilbey and the band push ever skyward on their monolithic and literate 26th album, 2023s The Hypnogogue. Opening with a rainbow-hued gurgle of what sounds like a spacecraft touching down on “Ascendence,” the album doesnt so much wash over you as hover like a cosmogonic stone temple from which each song emanates. Technically speaking, the story at the heart of The Hypnogogue is an enigmatic one, set in a dystopian f