It's still hard to believe that it took four decades and over 20 LPs for
the Church to release a full-on concept album as they did with 2023's
The Hypnogogue. Humming with a spacy, sci-fi energy, that album found lead singer/bassist
Steve Kilbey drawing upon the band's '80s goth roots and expanding their sound with an infusion of prog rock intensity, like a dark star pushing at the edges of the galaxy. A companion to
The Hypnogogue, 2024's wryly titled
Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars finds
Kilbey continuing to push at the edges of the band's legacy with the same gothy, dark star energy that feels both comfortably familiar and refreshing. Technically speaking, the album furthers the conceptual storyline of
The Hypnogogue; one in which a rock singer living in a dystopian future in 2054 discovers a machine that turns dreams into music. Love, sex, and mind-bending events follow as
Kilbey delves deeper into his opaque dreamscape. While somewhat oblique, for listeners seeking the narrative throughline on both
The Hypnogogue and
Eros Zeta & the Perfumed Guitars there is enough to grab onto in terms of what the heck is happening. That said, the main takeaway here is that
Kilbey can still conjure the goth rock magic, and
Eros Zeta & the Perfumed Guitars nicely brings to mind the best of the band's past work. Much of this is due to
Kilbey's warm baritone croon, which has lost none of its pearlescent sheen and benefits from the lyrical maturity and gravitas he's built over the years since the band debuted in 1981. The opening "Realm of Minor Angles" is a tantalizing ballad, like something
Frank Sinatra might have sung in the '60s but shot through with a Ziggy Stardust-style glitter rock ennui. Equally compelling are cuts like "Amanita," a spiraling 3/4 rock waltz, and "Song 18," a melodic, '50s-style pop anthem that sounds like it could have been culled from
David Bowie's
Diamond Dogs. Elsewhere,
Kilbey draws upon his late-'60s
Beatles fascination for "Pleasure," invokes the slow, bombastic wallop of
Pink Floyd on "The Immediate Future," and even nods to the acidic, Beatnick-proto-punk of
the Velvet Underground on "Song from the Machine Age." While there are plenty of hooky pop moments on
Eros Zeta & the Perfumed Guitars, the album's slowburn atmosphere speaks to both the longform narrative nature of concept albums and the band's own journeyman aesthetic; one that's less about radio hits and more about the spectral journey
Kilbey and
the Church take the listener on. ~ Matt Collar
