Always come back to The Church

The band, that is. Way back in the earliest days of MTV, we caught a late-night video (the only time I can remember seeing it, in fact) for “The Unguarded Moment,” and we were hooked. For years, I bought everything I could find from The Church — this was back in the days when I had time and energy to scour independent record stores for import EPs. They even had a little bit of a hit maybe around 1990, but it wasn’t their strongest stuff and my interest started to fade at around the same time I was rejecting my compulsion to own everything my favorite artists offered. Then a few years back the reviews for their aurally stunning cover album “A Box of Birds” were so strong that I gave them another try. This time, the reviews and MP3 snippets for a new slew of Church albums brought me back again. “After Everything Now This” is something that, as the reviews say, any even slight Church fan must have. Then, in addition to that album, they put out a 2-CD set of remixes and live tracks and other stuff from “After Everything Now This,” so now I’m completely absorbed into a Church cocoon once again.