1st Congregational Church Of Eternal Love (And Free Hugs)
by Kula Shaker

From spigelwii 03/26/2024 17:18 | #302695

Though it hasn't even been two years, time has not been kind to 1st Congregational. In a post-Natural Magick world, a Kula Shaker fan wonders whatever possessed Mills and Co. to make this largely ineffectual album sandwiched between two much better records.

The album starts off promisingly enough with a handful of nice songs, but many of them mostly sound like a good imitation of KS. Following the first interstitial--forebodingly titled "Let Us Pray--a lot of the other material just doesn't make it, ranging from pretty good (Don't Forsake Me and The Once & Future King) to forgettable and inoffensive (most of it) to suspiciously-nostalgia-motivated (303 Revisited) to totally embarrassing (Gingerbread Man). The interstitials themselves are fine, but their very existence is representative of a different issue I have with this record...

An album with this kind of dedication to a concept--It's called "1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love and Free Hugs" for goodness sakes--would normally have interstitials that introduce the songs rather than seem like weird non-sequiters, but that seems to be their only purpose here. They play as unrelated comedic interludes rather than adding depth or context. This isn't always a bad thing in a vacuum, but the forgettable songs scattered all around them does no favors to the concept and the whole thing just falls apart under its own weight as a result.

I don't hate this record, but it's so mystifyingly top-heavy and half-baked. For a band that's so frequently lamented as having "one trick," maybe we should be a little more grateful that they pull that trick off as often as they do.