I just picked up the remasters of The Church's Heyday and The Blurred Crusade this afternoon. So much for restraint (but...they were cheaper at this place, you understand).

As with the other two remasters I'd picked up recently, it stirs up a lot of memories. The moment Heyday starts up, I'm taken back to Myrrh's swirling dusty world of guitar build-up and time travel : "we were interrupted by the telephone / you didn't think they were invented then", with a bass rhythm that sits you on the road - you know you're going somewhere. This is music from another plane of existence, theirs and mine.

It's hard to top the sound of this album, right in the middle of the 1980's - this is the album just before That Famous Song They Did That Everybody Knows, and calling it Heyday isn't too far from a perfect choice. By this time, the band had a chance to really mark their territory, leaving behind some of the more Englishy pop sounds (cf. Too Fast For You back when they first started) and going for more heady, unique territory (but without succumbing to guitar wankery, fortunately). Disenchanted, though, comes off a lot more upbeat and guitar-poppy than the title (or lyrics) might suggest. But what better way start to a song called Roman than the line "oh what a feeling baby, knowledge and brutality" sung over the cutting guitarwork ? Then there's Tantalized, with its helicopter guitar work and much-lauded horns. My sentimental favourite though, is Already Yesterday, because it feels the most comforting, the most like home.

The remaster comes with 3 extra tracks, As You Will and The View (which had both been on the original CD release anyway, as well as the compilation Hindsight), and Trance Ending which had also been available on Hindsight. There's also the 3 videos, for the singles Already Yesterday, Tantalized and Columbus.