Editorial Reviews
Music Review:
Music Review
The Essential Willie Nelson [Limited Edition] [Original recording remastered]
Music: Tango Oscara Stroka [Import]
Profound Sounds, Vol. 2 [Enhanced]
Amazon.com
The Church have long forsaken the desire to make populist music and seem to exist to please themselves. Doubtless, the indulgent Parallel Universe won't win the band many new friends in the fair-weather world of mainstream rock & roll. No matter. Anyone open-minded enough to venture past the dauntingly awkward song titles will perceive this sprawling prog-inclined double-album as either a brave case of artistic leg-stretching or just Porcupine Tree with bells on. Essentially, Parallel Universe is a remix of the Church's latest studio offering, After Everything Now This. One disc is dedicated to reconstructing that album's material within some kind of gothic ambient framework (replete with fat synth bass, squealing, and metallic vocals), and a second disc offers similar reconstructions of songs originally considered surplus. Such projects often fail by straying too far from traditional song structures. Parallel Universe, however, maintains enough of After Everything's downer vibe and slovenly melody to prove the exception to the rule. --Kevin Maidment
Album Description
A double CD of material developed concurrently with 'After Everything Now This', the Church's critically acclaimed 2002 album. Disc one contains ten alternate arrangements of the original tracks. Disc two is a collection of tracks that were part of the sessions including one 11-minute 'no overdubs' atmospheric jam. Thirsty Ear.