When brothers Brandon and Richard Laws were considering names for their new aggregation three years ago, they were led by their philosophical love of spiritual and neighborly camaraderie to christen their band Church. No matter that there was an Australian band with a somewhat similar appellation; they didn’t seem to be doing much at that juncture.
“Brandon and Richard both really like the concept of community and church,” says keyboardist Christof Hendrickson from the band’s Portland, Oregon base. “And I don’t think they really thought that The Church would make the comeback that they seem to be doing now. But there are bands that exist with similar names and the only thing that separates them is ‘The’ and if they can do it, perhaps we can co-exist. We’re not popular enough yet for it to be a problem, and if it does become a problem, it’s probably a good thing.”
Hendrickson met Brandon Laws when both were students in Santa Barbara, California and wound up playing in a succession of bands together. A year after the Laws brothers relocated to Portland and formed the nucleus of Church - with Brandon on guitar and Richard on drums and vocals - Hendrickson followed suit and joined the nascent band to provide an epic keyboard sound.
“We were pretty familiar with each other musically, so we were just catching up, doing some jamming and figuring out what new instruments we wanted to play - we all kind of switched instruments - and just let the music take its course,” says Hendrickson. “We had some ideas that we wanted to follow; leaving space for vocals, minimal set-up, unique instruments and sounds and really just pay attention to details.”
As the trio developed a sound that melded the raw and visceral elements of early prog with a new wavish sense of noisy pop experimentalism, they began looking for live gigs to further explore their sonic potential. Luckily, they chose to assemble Church in the Portland scene, easily one of the most inclusive and open music communities in the country.
“It was a little strange, but the factor that made it difficult was that we were all a little bit new to Portland,” says Hendrickson of Church’s early live experiences. “We started playing shows two or three months after I got there. I was just looking through the papers trying to find the good venues to play. But I think Portland is pretty inviting to just about anybody, so we didn’t have too hard of a time. We got to know some people, dropped off some demos and got really favorable responses from the get go.”
The word prog will clearly scare some people still reeling from the eventual pompous bombast and self-important intricacy that spawned the stripped-down gobsmack of punk in the ’70s. But Church obviously channels an earlier point along the genre’s timeline, when prog was expansive and monumental but was also immediate and visceral and vibrant.
“I probably have more of a listening experience with that era than other people in the band,” says Hendrickson. “I use a Rhodes and then a mini Moog on top of that, and I got that inspiration from looking at prog bands in the ’70s like Yes and Genesis, and even looking before then to Kraftwerk and electronic artists in the ’60s and even ’50s.”
After turning out a pair of interesting home recorded EPs on an admittedly limited Tascam 4-track recorder (they rigged it to get four extra tracks on their second EP), Church decided to make the leap to the ’70s in preparation for their full length debut, Song Force Crystal.
“We stepped it up and actually bought a reel-to-reel multi-track recorder,” says Hendrickson. “So it’s different in the sense that we’re using a little bit better gear but still the same in the sense that we really respond to analog recordings and analog gear. We can’t really bring ourselves to record to computer. We’re still living in the land of tape.”
In addition to Church’s prog sensibilities, there is an exquisite sense of vocal harmony that runs through Song Force Crystal. For a band with relatively esoteric listening habits, one of their primary influences is one of the most surprising.
“I know the Beach Boys is a common thread among us for the vocal harmonies and their reverb sound,” says Hendrickson. “Brandon and Richard pay a lot of attention to reverb and to the vocal effects and to every little detail.”
The EPs and Song Force Crystal all offer incredibly expansive sound for music that was recorded in a living room. Part of Church’s immediacy is the fact that they’ve played everything live for their recordings, going back only to layer vocals and fix minor performance glitches. It’s an important aspect to the Church sound.
“The live element is something we really strive for,” says Hendrickson. “We feel like we sound a lot better live than we do recorded, and I think that’s just because we have more experience playing live than working in a studio or working at our house recording. Our goal is to try to have our recordings match what we sound like live. It’s a big challenge.”
Just prior to Song Force Crystal, Church expanded their line-up with new percussionist Lane Barrington whose arrival has fleshed out the band’s sound in subtle but extremely significant ways. The Barrington effect is all over the new album.
“All the percussion on the first two albums is just one floor tom, so you don’t have as much variety of sound in that way,” says Hendrickson. “With Lane, it doubles or triples the amount of percussion you hear. Now Lane and Richard work in tandem to get a lot of polyphonic beats and hold things down rhythmically. That’s allowed us to have more freedom to explore more dynamics; louder, softer, really rocking stuff that we probably couldn’t have pulled off before. And the more we play, the more we like to experiment with things, break out and try weird instruments and effects.”
Song Force Crystal exudes a sense that Church’s material is both organically jammed out and meticulously composed; in fact, the way the band‘s writing process is structured, it’s more the former than the latter.
“Richard or Brandon will usually come up with an idea for a melody and lyrics for the vocals and that’s usually our only starting point,” says Hendrickson. “From there, we just jam out some ideas and maybe have something we like and keep doing different drafts. Once we find something we feel good about, we play it live as much as we can. From there, we feel ready to record it. A lot of the songs (on Song Force Crystal) we’d been playing live for a couple of months. In that way, they‘re very tight, but as far as composed and arranged, it‘s all in the group making that come together.”
--Brian Baker [July 25, 2009]
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CHURCH's Song Force Crystal is released August 4, 2009 on Tender Loving Empire.
