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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

349. "Constant in Opal" by The Church



Maybe this is odd and maybe it's not, but when I first came up with the idea of doing the Remote Luxury full-album cover project, "Constant in Opal" was one of the first songs I thought I could restructure into something a little more organic, by doing just what I did here: replacing the pulsing synth of the original with a driving, Crazy Horsey guitar. But now that it's done, I'm not sure it flies. It's not bad, but the other thing I hoped to do to the song was to add some dynamics to it. Instead, I may if anything have done just the opposite. It does have a little more swirl and mystery to it now, largely thanks to Charlie's e-bow guitar part. And that's a good thing, because I somehow failed to capture his guitar at the band session he attended to help us cut this one and "Do It Clean", so I trekked down to his house in Irvine a few days later to record it there. We got a good take in no time and had a good time catching up, but it was a late night.

So many Church albums seem to open with one of these "troubled travelers" songs, and this might be the one that set the archetype. A bunch of wandering people-- always a group, a "we"-- in a strange land, seeking the wrong things for all the wrong reasons, lost because of their own blindness to some fundamental truth. Actually, a lot of Church songs in general follow that concept, but the album openers almost always exemplify it best, and it almost always works perfectly as a mood-setting tactic.

Personnel:
SKATES & RAYS
Rex Broome ~ Guitars, vocals
Derek Hanna ~ Drums
Clifford Ulrich ~ Bass
with Charlie Eckstrom ~ E-bow guitar

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