Musically, it recalls the densely layered electro-pop of bands like Cold Cave and Handsome Furs, who made their mark in the late 2000s. Baritone vocals reminiscent of Matt Berninger’s work with The National also transport us back to that time. That makes sense, since that was also the era when Church’s duo Exitmusic came on the scene.
That was a great time for music, before the rise of streaming platforms began to eat away at the bottom line for all but the most successful artists, back when it still seemed feasible to sustain alternative culture through record sales.
In light of how dire the economic prospects for most musicians have become, evoking that era’s sound could be construed as an implicit commentary on how far we have fallen as a society in the interim, now that Big Tech has colonised every square centimetre of everyday life.
Whether that was Devon Church‘s intention or not, his lyrics show that he has been thinking along those lines. But only if you pay attention.
Because stereotypes about genre constrain our sense of what is possible, listeners might not notice that All That’s Solid Melts Into Air politicises an approach to music-making not typically associated with social critique.
If the title track that opens the record were a rousing punk rocker like The Clash’s “London Calling” or a take-no-prisoners rap like Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” its invocation of The Communist Manifesto would be less surprising.
If Church’s vocals on “Working Class Zero” resembled the ones on John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” instead of the wistful pop promoted by Pitchfork magazine twenty years ago, the self-consciously socialist reference to Bread and Roses wouldn’t make listeners do a double-take.
Even the folky “Lilies” drapes lines like “Jesus came to smash the state” in layers of breathy reverb, softening the musical blow.
It’s that tension between form and content that makes All That’s Solid Melts Into Air so compelling. In order for music like this to make a significant impact, however, it needs to be heard. And heeded.
There has never been an easier time for artists to make and distribute truly independent music, beholden to nobody but themselves.
Unfortunately, that facility is double-edged. The challenge today is less about producing art than preventing it from being lost in a flood of content.
As I write this, the song from All That’s Solid Melts Into Air with the most traffic on Spotify has fewer than 7000 plays, a paltry number. And the situation is even bleaker on YouTube, where most tracks currently have fewer than 20 views.
Even if someone discovers an album like this, as I did while sorting through hundreds of new releases on Bandcamp, the likelihood of that person listening to the tracks thoroughly enough to reflect on their purpose is depressingly minuscule.
The first time I heard the title track, I loved the way it sounded, detecting notes of Suicide, My Bloody Valentine, and Band of Horses. But the only lyrics that made an impression were the quotes from Marx and Engels.
Although I was pleased to hear “all that’s sacred’s profaned” in a song that didn’t sound like agit-prop, those words didn’t seem to be doing anything innovative. It was only after listening two more times that I began to perceive the subtleties in Church’s songwriting:
hey my love
heavens above
i never want to be untrue
raven, dove, milk or blood
I’ll paint them all for you, honey
Yves Klein blue
I see them coming,
I hear the riders
I see the pale horse’s nostrils flare
blue angels’ trumpets
the brass is shining in the sun
and all that’s solid melts into air
all that’s solid melts into air
all that’s sacred’s profaned
By invoking the Book of Revelations prior to the Communist Manifesto, Church challenges the latter’s suggestion that modern life leads to a progressive disenchantment of the world. In his account, secularisation does an about-face, preparing the way for spiritual discovery.
If we revisit the song’s first verse, however, it’s clear that this fusion of Christian and Communist imagery unfolds within the context of a love song. Church is singing to a specific individual, the person for whom he is willing to paint the world blue.
The effect is similar to one Joni Mitchell achieves on “Big Yellow Taxi,” when it becomes clear that her passionate denunciation of ecological destruction is bound up with despair at the end of a relationship. It turns out that when she sings that, “they paved paradise/And put up a parking lot” in the chorus, she is also commenting on her failure to prevent the damage that ends her love affair.
Devon Church’s point in “All That’s Solid Melts Into Air” is harder to discern. He wants us to know that he is singing the blues. But it’s unclear, in the end, whether he wants us to perceive his relationship as a metaphor for what is wrong with society or society as a metaphor for what is wrong with his relationship.
Further complicating our understanding of the title track is the fact that it’s not just any blue that he is prepared to paint the world, but specifically “Yves Klein blue”, a hue trademarked by the eponymous postwar artist as an implicit commentary on the degree to which private property dominates every aspect of modern existence.
All That’s Solid Melts Into Air is full of details like this, the sort that require repeated listening to appreciate properly.
One of my favourite songs on the album is “Everything Shivering”, which mines the frigid winters of Church’s childhood home in Winnipeg, Canada, to comment on the lack of warmth in our everyday lives. The chorus demonstrates the granular specificity that makes for memorable lyrics:
The tape inside my walkman slowed
it does that when it gets this cold
“Visions of Johanna” played
‘the ghost of electricity’
in baritone at half-time speed
the moments forming, unique, strange
ice crystals on a window pane
everything was shivering
The way intense cold alters the sound of physical media is not something that an individual who only knows songs from streaming platforms would understand. What Church captures here is a legacy experience—the sort of deviation from the norm that could inspire paradoxical hope—because it demonstrates that there is an alternative to the way our lives are programmed by capitalism: the little freedom afforded us by a fortuitous malfunction.
Again, though, this is the sort of lyrical detail that listeners are unlikely to perceive without spending meaningful time with All That’s Solid Melts Into Air. At a time when the best chance for songs to make an impact is through viral success, it’s hard to summon that degree of concentration.
But all is not lost.
When I attended a concert by the Belarusian band Molchat Doma in my home of Tucson, Arizona, a couple of years ago, I was shocked to find myself surrounded by young people singing the Russian lyrics to one song after another, even though the band’s only “hit” to speak of was a single TikTok snippet.
While it’s unlikely that Devon Church will achieve this level of success with a song from All That’s Solid Melts Into Air, there remains a chance that this fine album will find an appreciative audience.
That’s why, instead of music criticism that preoccupies itself with the pros and cons of the latest Taylor Swift album, we need more of the sort that is willing to stray far from the beaten path, finding records that might otherwise go unnoticed and spending enough time with them to convey what makes them special.
Although it would be foolhardy to conflate this process with political activism, refusing to settle for more of the same is an approach that works just as well at the ballot box as it does on a streaming platform.
As I listened to Devon Church this past week, a Canadian who found a home in New York, I could not help but think of Zohran Mamdani’s stunning rise from obscurity to be elected mayor of that incomparable city.
In a world dominated by mega-billionaires who devote most of their energy to becoming richer at our expense, celebrating underdogs is a crucial antidote to despair.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
