Devon Church has today released his new video and single titled ‘Fall Like Lightning’, from his upcoming album ‘All That’s Solid Melts Into Air’, dropping November 7th.
Signature from that first note, brooding and bashed throughout, Devon Church shows a signature style that is both original and interesting. ‘Fall Like Lightning’ is a prime display of what to expect with ‘All That’s Solid Melts Into Air’, when it drops November 7th.
Lyrically genius, like a beautiful word salad drenched with extra dream dressing, ‘Fall Like Lightning’ careens, clashes, and caresses the lyrics into the music so they fit in a truly artistic and mesmerizing manner. This is as much a work of art as it is a song. Don’t dismiss, digest.
About Devon Church & ‘All That’s Solid Melts Into Air’
On his new single “Fall Like Lightning,” Devon Church attempts a kind of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” for dejected denizens of the internet. A lyrically dense, Dylanesque polemic against social media and surveillance capitalism, it dances between irony and sincerity, tragedy and comedy, to the urgent palpitations of a crackling breakbeat. Recorded to dusty cassette tape, the track seems to belong somewhere in Northern England circa 1997 while the lyrics ponder our extremely 21st century predicament.
‘Is there no alternative, is this how we were meant to live? A price on every molecule and subatomic particle…’ Church sings, recalling Margaret Thatcher’s inauguration of the neoliberal counter-revolution and the subtitle of Mark Fisher’s book, Capitalist Realism. The lyrics do propose a solution to this riddle. Perhaps the alternative is to collectively turn away from the digital spectacle that has commodified everything but our dreams (‘there must be some way to monetize / what you see when you close your eyes”) and take up the cause of human solidarity against the billionaire tech oligarchs (“Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel, Ek, Musk / they filled our beggars cups with dust”). Foretelling their defeat, Church employs one of his trademark biblical references, quoting Jesus of Nazareth in a sardonic baritone for the song’s refrain; “I see Satan fall like lightning”…
The video for the song, shot principally in the futuristic ruins of Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti’s abandoned dome-home, features Church glued to his iPhone in various dramatic Sardinian and Roman locations. It was directed by Church, filmed by his wife, painter Ada Roth (who also contributed vocals to the track), and edited by frequent collaborator Danny Scales.
On All That’s Solid Melts Into Air Devon Church veers sonically and politically leftward. Taking its title from a famous Karl Marx quote – “All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned” – Church’s third album contemplates the corrosive effects of 21st century capitalism – impending climate doom, skyrocketing wealth inequality, the predations of the so-called ‘attention economy’, genocide and the specter of world war – and their hallucinatory effects on our collective and individual psyches.
If Church’s sophomore album, 2023’s Strange Strangers, invited listeners to view Death of a Ladies Man-era Leonard Cohen through a psychedelic indie pop prism, his latest offering takes some of it’s dystopian lyrical inspiration from 80’s Cohen classics like “First We Take Manhattan,” and “Everybody Knows.” The album’s sonic palette however, is diverse, and decidedly low fidelity. Sounding as if they were recorded by a lone eccentric in a smoky, wood paneled basement in 1984 (or in some post-digital future), wobbly analog synths, harmonium, digital tamburas, primeval 70’s drum machines, and painstakingly orchestrated surf guitars all blend together with Church’s laconic baritone on these saturated four track cassette recordings.
‘All That’s Solid Melts Into Air’ Tracklist
- All That’s Solid Melts Into Air
- Nothing Sacred
- Fall Like Lightning
- Hungover In The World War
- Everything Shivering
- Lilies
- The Lives Of Poets
- Porcupine Shuffling
- Working Class Zero
- Trembler
Church’s references are wide-ranging, both musically and lyrically. The album’s title track, a song about staying true to the ones you love while the world falls apart, is a woozy synth and CR78 anthem, desecrated by fuzzed out guitars that recall the VU and Eno’s “Needle in the Camel’s Eye.” Another standout track, “Fall Like Lightning,” attempts a kind of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” for dejected denizens of the internet. A lyrically dense diatribe against social media and platform capitalism set to a crackling breakbeat, it seems to belong somewhere in Northern England circa 1997 while making its extremely topical argument. ‘Is there no alternative, is this how we were meant to live? A price on every molecule and subatomic particle…’ he sings, recalling Margaret Thatcher’s inauguration of the neoliberal counter-revolution and the subtitle of Mark Fisher’s book, Capitalist Realism. The lyrics do attempt to answer this riddle. The alternative is to collectively turn away from the digital spectacle that has monetized everything but our dreams (so far) and take action – to ‘shit out’ the billionaires (‘Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel, Ek, Musk / they filled our beggars cups with dust’) through the black hole in the center of the galaxy. By way of casting out our demonic tech oligarchs, Church quotes another champion of the poor, Jesus of Nazareth, in the choruses; ‘I see Satan fall like lightning’…
“Hungover in the World War,” meanwhile is a wistful, meditative folk song, whose fingerpicked acoustic guitar and deep, world weary vocals might put one in mind of Blaze Foley if it weren’t for the ominous droning of a tambura and the occasional eruptions of nervously trilling Godspeed! You Black Emperor-esque guitars that somehow evoke the titular ‘world war’. “Lilies” is a Louvin Brothers-style country gospel song invoking socialist revolution. Dense with biblical imagery, slide guitar and the otherworldly trills of an omnichord, the track is propelled by the ‘Swing’ setting on Church’s trusty Korg SR-120 drum machine. Indeed, some of the idiosyncrasies and genre shifts on the album may be reducible to the different presets on that primitive rhythm machine. For example, Nothing Sacred is a surrealist ‘tango’ exploring the mind-virus of right wing ‘red-pilling’ and the derangement of the chronically online that somehow sounds like it should be playing in a resistance speakeasy in WW2 Paris, or in an alternate universe.
Not all the songs are political, but they all reflect Church’s particular obsessions. “Porcupine Shuffling” is a stream of consciousness ode to the Tantric Buddhist meditation deity Vajravarahi, propelled by an explosive 909 beat, angry guitars and the pulsating bass arpeggio of a Juno 6 synth. The lyrics are packed with literary references ranging from the Old Testament to James Joyce to, once again, Marx, all while circumambulating the mysterious central image of a porcupine in the moonlight. “Everything Shivering” conjures, via the Marc Ribot-like lead guitar line, drenched in tremolo, the feeling of a frozen night walk in -30 degree Winnipeg, Church’s hometown. ‘The moonlit trees like nerve endings, everything shivering’, Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” warping and slowing as the cold overwhelms the AA batteries in his walkman. Another odd little artifact, ‘The Lives Of The Poets,” enumerates the lives (and more specifically, the unusual deaths) of four of Church’s favorite writers, over a soundtrack of late-Soviet synth pop and the tortured dissonance of his beloved Fender Jaguar. ‘Trembler’, a slow and unexpectedly operatic post punk meditation, returns to one of Church’s favorite themes, mortality, as the song’s narrator visited by an angel who explains the origin, end, and eternal recurrence of the cosmos while waiting at a bus stop on another frigid night in Winnipeg.
Born in Winnipeg and based in New York City since 2009, Devon Church co-founded the critically acclaimed (now disbanded) dream pop duo, Exitmusic (Secretly Canadian, Felte). Since 2018 he has been releasing solo music, marrying a love for thoughtful, poetic songwriting to his textural, idiosyncratic DIY production style.
J.J. Snowden
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/wearedevonchurch/
https://www.instagram.com/wearedevonchurch/
https://www.youtube.com/@devon-church
https://devonchurch.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/devonchurch