![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/chris_church_radio.jpg\")
From one perspective, the pop landscape is populated with artists taking different approaches to their work. On one end of this particular spectrum lies the \u201cconsistent\u201d artist. He, she or they make music with a character that endures through all or at least most of their work. You know what you\u2019re getting when they release a new album; to some extent, it\u2019s more of the same, and there\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with that approach.<\/p>\n
The other end of the spectrum is simultaneous problematic and fascinating. There lies artists like Todd Rundgren, (sometimes) Neil Young and the like. They can veer wildly from project to project; it\u2019s up to you to keep up or not. Their approach can be confounding, and it can produce work that you love followed by something you find unlistenable. But it\u2019s admirable, and in the end you love them for it.<\/p>\n
Chris Church is not as well-known as either Young nor Rundgren. But taken as a whole (or a whole-in-progress) his body of work displays the same kind of peripatetic variety that characterizes their mindsets. Some times he\u2019s metal man, other days he’s a pop person. And so on. And with Church, there really is an undercurrent of that consistency as well. While I\u2019m not bowled over by every single one of his albums (same as with the work of Todd or Neil), I can\u2019t think of a single misstep among them.<\/p>\n
And Radio Transient<\/i> doesn\u2019t change any of that. The songs are very, very<\/i> strong, and the production values are what we used to call radio-friendly. There\u2019s a subtle \u201880s jangle on tunes like \u201cI Don\u2019t Wanna Dance With Me,\u201d but there\u2019s absolutely nothing retro about the song. Its character subtly hints at Oblivion<\/i>-era Utopia, but like everything on the record, it\u2019s Chris church through and through; no carbon-copy or identikit rock for this artist.<\/p>\n
Church mixes up guitar and keyboard textures in service of his solid melodies. For him, it\u2019s always about the songs, and on Radio Transient<\/i>, it\u2019s almost as through each track is better than the one that preceded it. \u201cI Think I Like You\u201d is full of chiming guitars, earnest lead vocal work, creamy and subtle backing harmonies and razor-sharp hooks. And no review of the album should overlook one of its secret weapons: the wonderful backing\/harmony vocals of Lindsay Murray<\/a>. She’s all over<\/em> this album, and the record’s better for it. The whole thing adds up to what may well be the finest release in Church\u2019s career to date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From one perspective, the pop landscape is populated with artists taking different approaches to their work. On one end of this particular spectrum lies the \u201cconsistent\u201d artist. He, she or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25324,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[4357],"class_list":["post-25353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-chris-church","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25353"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25377,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25353\/revisions\/25377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}