As it turns out, they DO believe in evolution.
[Video]
[6.00]
Alex Clifton: In undergrad, I talked with a heartily Baptist girl who asked me point blank if I believed in God. I grew up with Catholic guilt, buddhas scattered around the house, and lots of books by atheists and transcendentalists, so I mashed that all together into a theory that there are many roads to the truth of Being a Good Person. For some, that’s God; for me, it was always music. I tried to explain this to the girl but she didn’t really get how I could see this kind of truth in anything that was not an institutional religion, and she never spoke to me again. But I think that same feeling permeates “Church.” It’s laden with religious imagery, sinning and redemption and all that, but the church in question seems to be any sort of escape where you can get lost in something and learn to forgive yourself. Maybe it’s an actual house of worship, or maybe it’s a night drive where you have time to think about the world, or maybe it’s a walk around a neighbourhood to look at pretty houses. Whatever it is, it’s yours to keep: the way Aly & AJ sing the line “I need a little church” makes it feel like you’re swapping a secret with them. They’ll let you into their church and they won’t tell a soul where you find your truth. It’s a lovely song that is immensely private and cathartic, and it reminds me why I chose music as my church.
[8]
Alfred Soto: “I can’t even stop to take care of my own self/Let alone somebody else” — boom. I’ve waited years for another “It’s a Sin”: Catholic guilt with the desperation of dance hall days. Only the vocodered, echo-laden production lets it down.
[6]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: There’s a lot of potential for a song about Christian guilt and how it seeps into one’s ability to love others and oneself, but “Church” doesn’t divulge enough details to make this lyrical conceit convincing. There’s a semblance of regret and desire for change when they admit selfishness, but the tone of the song never hits the level of devastation or wistfulness that it needs. And while there’s a lot associated with saying “I need a little church,” it still feels like an easy copout in a song that’s noticeably underdeveloped.
[4]
David Moore: Aly & AJ have written two of the best songs I’ve ever heard that process emotions that I personally associate with my early, brief exposure to Christianity: “Not This Year” is my favorite Christmas song of all time, about reconciling seasonal blues with the affected cheeriness of the holiday. “Blush” is a song about sexual desire with a limited means of expressing it, and as such it circles around desire — the physicality of it, the taboo of it — with a level of sophistication and attention missing from songs about a sex whose casualness is taken for granted. So I’m bringing way too high a bar to “Church” — as far as their (re?-)budding electropop career goes, this is meatier qua song than most of their previous comeback singles, but the sentiment is comparatively flat, the ache for absolution from unspecified sins sounding more like pretext than subject. (It makes me want to go back to Krystal Meyers’s “Beautiful Tonight,” which leans hard into the remorse rather than the redemption.)
[6]
Ian Mathers: I genuinely can’t decide if the fact that “Church” seems muddled about whether or not our narrators really are defiantly unashamed of these sort of vague “bad things” for which they need to go to church is a weakness or a strength. And either way I’m not exactly sure how “I need a little church” cashes out (although this is possibly because, a few weddings and a Christmas service or two when my grandma was still alive aside, I’ve never been to church). But I do keep humming it regardless, so clearly at least part of me thinks it’s a bop.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: “I need redemption for sins I can’t mention” — try that one on a priest, confession without actually confessing anything. Can you really not mention them? Is it just pat songwriting? Or is it that mentioning actual sins would be too messy and ugly, and potentially alive and pulsing and thrilling, for this bit of featherweight ethereal breathy purification via self-loathing? Everything is abstractions and euphemisms, the lyrics’ bad-girl connotations only half-bowdlerized away; it’s like you put “Criminal” in a teen devotional. The vocals are pretty, the vocoding is decent, the track is sweeping, and yet I feel demeaned.
[5]
Vikram Joseph: There are a lot of moments here that push all of my buttons — the skittering beat and hauntingly euphoric synths in the chorus, the autotuned acapella sections that remind me of “Hide And Seek” — but there are lyrics here that make Aly & AJ sound like a teen movie’s snarky parody of a Christian electro-pop act. “I need redemption for sins I can’t mention,” is notably comical, and once you start to think about it in that context even the chorus starts to sound like an outtake from The Book Of Mormon (“I need a little… church!”). Nonetheless, it sounds lovely enough that I’m willing to embrace the awkwardness.
[6]