Church. Friday, Oct. 24

[October 22nd, 2008]

[AVANT-POP] The first thing you notice about Church’s music is what’s not there. The band’s songs—hushed, slightly off-kilter slabs of avant-pop—have this wide, expansive space to them; nothing feels extraneous, and even though the arrangements are meticulously crafted, the melodies still shine through. Sometimes a well-placed silence says as much as an intricate guitar solo.

“Having a lot of space is very much a key part of what we do,” says drummer and vocalist Richard Laws, fidgeting with his mop of greasy hair in the living room of the Northeast Portland house he shares with brother and bandmate Brandon. “We might have a lot of things going on at certain points, but we keep an eye out for keeping the important elements of the song afloat and in the forefront.”

The group—Richard and Brandon Laws, keyboardist Christof Hendrickson and recently added second drummer Lane Barrington—is about to release some of the best 16 minutes of music this year, but you wouldn’t know it from its makers’ decidedly unassuming demeanor. Bikes line the entryway to the house, rice milk sits untouched in the fridge, and the basement where Church practices its sermons is more cluttered than the band’s sound. Though Church’s music isn’t religious, per se, it’s heavily indebted to the more overlooked aspects of church: community and collaboration.

Fueled by equal doses of Captain Beefheart and Joose (a cheap, 9.9-percent-ABV energy kick in the pants), Church recorded its Gold EP, which features tunes that mutate more than the creature in Alien. Standout “Cloud” shifts effortlessly from somber, weightless chamber-folk to a galloping rocker, and the downcast set closes with the quartet’s shortest and sharpest pop song, the bouncy “Happiness.”

With Barrington around, Church now features two percussionists, and the added member has allowed for a more natural, rhythmic element to gurgle up. That influence should play heavily into its new full-length, which the group plans to release in March.

“This [next] one is going to be a lot more elaborate in terms of instrumentation,” Richard says. “Things can be catchy in the minor key, right?”