We are giving away a pair of tickets to The Church, The Afghan Whigs @ Crystal Ballroom on July 6. To win, comment below on this post why you’d like to attend. Winner will be drawn and emailed July 1.
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From our sponsors:
The Afghan Whigs
Special Guest: Ed Harcourt
July 6, 2024
6:30PM Doors, 8PM Show | All Ages
$45 ADV, $50 Doors, 21+ Reserved Balcony – $55 ADV, $60 Doors
More info: crystalballroompdx.com
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St, Portland, OR 97209
Few bands enter their fifth decade of making music with all the fierce creative energy of their early years. Even fewer bands are like The Church.
Experiencing a renaissance of sorts with their worldwide critically-hailed 26th album The Hypnogogue and a world tour that took them through North America, the UK, Europe and Australia, The Church was met with fervent audiences who embraced not only their early catalog but their new material as well. UNCUT encapsulated this idea when they wrote in their 8 out of 10 review that “The Hypnogogue is like every other Church album, and nothing quite like any of them; both statements are intended as compliments.”
A monumental concept album, The Hypnogogue found The Church honing in on their bespoke sound without retreading creative steps, unveiling a cinematic record that couples their trademark psychedelic-splashed indie rock with a dystopian narrative – a first for the band. Featuring pre-album release singles “The Hypnogogue”, “C’est La Vie” and “No Other You,” the album offers a pool of melancholy tones and psychedelic swells, transporting listeners to another realm, guided by its striking science fiction narrative. Reading like a short story from visionary science fiction author Philip K. Dick (“A Scanner Darkly,” “Electric Dreams”), The Hypnogogue is a retro-futuristic, dystopian tale that revolves around a fictional machine (the “Hypnogogue”) that extracts music directly from subconscious dreams.
As fans’ love of the band grew with the advent of the new record and its new direction, critics embraced them too. Rolling Stone quipped, “In full flight, Kilbey plays the bass with a power and intent once reserved for ascending Lancaster bomber pilots in WWII.” Vive Le Rock rated it a 9 out of 10 and calls the album “a great leap forward, thanks to the incredible melting pot of talent that Kilbey is now stirring.” American Songwriter praised, “On The Hypnogogue, the quintet creates fluid moods, moving in idiosyncratic directions while maintaining the shadowy gaze that has defined The Church’s style.” Classic Rock hailed, “The Hypnogogue finds [Steve Kilbey] close to the top of his game… The best bands have the capacity to surprise even after decades at the coal face. That The Church remain so vigorous and vibrant is a delightful surprise indeed.”
To continue the excitement that the music world at large was experiencing, Steve Kilbey and band decided to further the storyline of the Hypnogogue by returning to the studio to add additional tracks for a deluxe edition of The Hypnogogue to be released this Fall 2023. While the digital companion to the album will be available worldwide on DSPs, a special physical deluxe edition will be available to purchase as a standalone physical format at merch on the upcoming U.S. dates.
The Afghan Whigs
How Do You Burn?
From their inception in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1986, The Afghan Whigs have never played by the rules of convention. Against the plaid-and-grunge-shaded backdrop of the early-to-mid-‘90s, the Whigs stood apart from their contemporaries by virtue of attiring in suits and being way more likely to slide up on a Marvin Gaye groove than rehash a Black Sabbath riff.
They stand apart still. Twenty-six years down the line, bands simply aren’t supposed to be making the most vaulting and thrilling music of their lives. Yet that’s precisely what the Whigs have done with ‘How Do You Burn?’, their ninth album overall and following on from the brace of widely-acclaimed records they’ve made previously since re-grouping in 2012, ‘Do to the Beast’ (2014) and ‘In Spades’ (2017). ‘How Do You Burn?’ picks up the baton laid down by each of those records and runs it to the horizon.
Work on it was begun in September 2020 – the COVID pandemic having forced Whigs frontman/songwriter Greg Dulli to abandon plans to tour his highly-praised solo album, ‘Random Desire’ – and continued over the next 14 months.
The global pandemic dictated also that the band record largely apart from, and in different locations to, each other: Dulli, his co-producer Christopher Thorn and drummer Patrick Keeler together in California; bassist John Curley, guitarist Jon Skibic and strings man Rick Nelson laying down and engineering their own parts in Cincinnati, New Jersey and New Orleans, respectively.