Of Skins and Heart

The Church’s debut album is in retrospect the definition of ‘promising’ – it’s a key listen still to understand how the group started on its road towards being a decades-old institution, though in ways the quartet was still gently woodshedding here and there. But what woodshedding at its best: besides “The Unguarded Moment,” the stellar single that fully introduced their engaging, sweetly melancholic neo-psychedelia to a wider audience, songs like “For A Moment We’re Strangers” and “Is This Where You Live” were early signs of the rich vein of work to follow.