Storefront Church - Blue Movie - Midnight Blue Colored Vinyl - VINYL LP

Black vinyl. Lukas Frank played and sung, produced and mixed Blue Movie at home in L.A., ditching Ink & Oil's rich orchestrations for a more intimate, electronic palette jagged edges, beautiful surges and harsh truths. You know. DIY epics. Batcave reverb. Moog heartbeat. Like Bowie swapping battle stories with Fever Ray, while Suicide swoons at Prince. Depeche Mode picking winners for an 80s John Hughes soundtrack? InchIf there's a throughline with my records it's that they all somehow relate to movies. If my last record was extravagant and aspirational, this new one is cheap and seedy. Blue Movie was birthed alone in a windowless shed with fake instruments and synths; my worst impulses on display.Inch - Lukas Frank.

The Blurred Crusade - the second album from The Church was released in March 1982, less than a year after their debut, Of Skins & Heart. Again produced by Bob Clearmountain and boasting the singles InchAlmost With YouInchand InchWhen You Were MineInch - the album has gone on to be held in particularly high esteem with fans. In 2010, the recording was included in the '100 Greatest Australian Albums publication'. As described by Melody Maker at the time 'Taking unusually uncool risks and carrying them off with poise and panache, The Church sound unbelievably confident, Kilbey's fragile celebrations of the tricks and trials of the hedonistic human psyche hung in free prairies of wide open space for the listener's imagination to explore'. The album is now proudly pressed on 180 gram blue vinyl to coincide with the 2024 tour.

On one hand, their fifth album, Information Retrieved, is the logical and accessible realization of a sound Pinback have been developing and refining for over a decade. However, that consistency that we've taken for granted is what makes Information Retrieved such a euphoric surprise; their finest and most fully realized album, a dozen years deep into a career that includes bona fide modern classics like InchGood To SeaInch and Summer In Abaddon. Simply put, this is better than we ever could have expected. They could have coasted on automatic pilot to another lauded album that likely would have made it onto plenty of year-end lists, but instead they shot the moon, and the result is a major triumph. The touchstones are still there Zach Smith's stunningly unique bass guitar acrobatics driving both rhythm and melody in lock-step unison; the incredible immediacy of Rob Crow's voice that could make a phone book sound compelling; and the musical and lyrical interplay between the two of them that made Pinback so special in the first place. The difference now is their exquisite control over dynamics and a greater emotional resonance throughout. It's the most complete and soulful Pinback album by a fair distance, the finest moment in the career of a band whose unfettered brilliance we've come to count on, but will never again take for granted.