blueeyedgirl
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Cos it looks better in person than in photos????
*hopes for an Adelaide heatwave so someone might have to shave*
*hopes for an Adelaide heatwave so someone might have to shave*
Wow! Steve looks pretty dapper there!
greatness Indra!
HOLY LONGEVITY, BATMAN
SINCE THEIR HUMBLE BEGINNINGS IN CANBERRA’S 1980s NEW WAVE SCENE, THROUGH LINE-UP AND DIRECTION CHANGES, THE CHURCH HAVE MANAGED TO KEEP A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE FOR NEARLY 30 YEARS. SINGER-SONGWRITER AND BASS GUITARIST STEVE KILBEY CHATS TO MITCH KNOX ABOUT STAYING FRESH THREE DECADES AFTER BEING UNLEASHED ON THE WORLD.
If you’ve ever tried your hand at creative writing – in any format – you’ll understand how hard it can be to come up with consistently good ideas. So to look at a band like The Church, who have been steadily pumping out evocative and chameleonic music for the better part of thirty years, is to look at a band with a secret; some kind of sonic fountain of youth. Surely the proof is in the pudding: the band released their 23rd chronological release (and 20th full-length) earlier this year, Untitled #23, to widespread critical and audience acclaim, showing no signs of being an act old enough to have fathered some of you. But lead singer/bassist Steve Kilbey maintains they approached Untitled #23 like they do all their albums. After all, there’s not really a secret – or if there is, he’s not too sure what it is.
“We’re never focused,” he says. “We’re never sitting there like one unit, going, ‘Let’s do this’, and everyone going, ‘Yeah’. It’s pretty much, like, whatever’s going on at the time; people going through their different individual musical phases. I don’t know what the other guys are listening to; I don’t know what kind of album they wanted to make. So I guess we just randomly apply our process of writing and we never know what we’re going to come up with, and I guess we accidentally came up with this one this time, which people seem to like.
“I wish I knew what [our secret] was, so we could do it next time, because next time we’re all going to be arguing about how to do it again, and first of all, no-one will be able to agree on how we did it, and no-one will even be able to agree to what we actually had done in the first place. I think when we finish a record everybody sees it differently.”
What caught Kilbey off-guard about Untitled #23’s release was not so much everyone in the band having different perceptions of the album, but rather that the audience saw it very differently to him.
“I’m a bit like a parent who wasn’t that impressed with his child, and then the child went out into the world and did well and suddenly I was like, ‘Yes, well, I always knew he’d be a good boy’,” he says. “I am, seriously. I didn’t have that high hopes for this album. I thought it was... I don’t know. I don’t know how I felt towards it; kind of a bit indifferent. Then, when it did kind of well, I changed my opinion. I had to.
“I thought we were banging against a wall and I thought it didn’t really matter what we would do that people would kind of… for a long time now, we’ve been getting reviews that say, ‘Oh yeah, another good album from The Church. Next!’ You know? So I felt like, well, we’ve made another kind of good album, and people will say the same thing, and I was a bit resigned, I guess. I was kind of surprised when people noticed it.”
But notice it people did, and it wasn’t long until the band launched their So Love May Find Us Tour earlier this year – which included a trip through the United States and Canada – and now the band is returning to our shores to complete their tour.
“I think it’s going to be pretty good,” Kilbey admits. “Tickets are selling quite well in the cities, and Perth’s already sold out – two nights in Perth – so I think it’s going to be a good show. We have to figure out what we’re going to play yet, but I think it’s going to be good.
“[Expect] a lot more intensity than you probably think you’re going to get. We’ve become very intense. We’re really rockin’ these days. We’re really loud. We’re quite brash. We’re going to do a lot of songs off our new album, and we’ll do a smattering of old and mid-period stuff.”
To coincide with the tour, the band are unveiling three additional releases: a four-track EP, which boasts a near-50 minute runtime and was recorded during the Untitled #23 sessions, and two re-issues – a remastering of Shriek: Excerpts From The Soundtrack, on which the band collaborated with American sci-fi author Jeff VanderMeer, and a reissue of Back With Two Beasts, an album originally released in 2005 in online digital format.
Says Kilbey of the EP’s unusually long duration, “Yeah, I think there’s a 36-minute long instrumental track on it, that’s why you’ll find that enormous length. “I didn’t have 36 minutes spare to listen to it, so I don’t know what it is. 36 minutes in a day, that’s a big chunk of your day. That’s like 1/48th of your whole day to hand over to listen to some bunch of geezers having a jam.”
To hear one of Australia’s music legends speak so derisively of himself is jarring, but Kilbey insists he and his bandmates are not over the hill yet.
“I think potentially we could go on and still make some very, very good records. Age shall not weary us the way it has wearied other bands,” he says. “But what we have to fight off is that thing that hits middle-aged and elderly people, of sort of just going through the showbiz kind of motions, and The Church is really determined not to do that. Well, we haven’t so far, and I’m kind of onto it. I’m onto it.
“And every time it creeps in, I try and do something about it. We can’t help getting old, but we can help becoming that old, stupid thing, where we’re like a parody… But obviously as institutions and individuals and even civilisations grow old, they tend to become corrupt or dry or they crumble or they can burn or they can become arrogant; it’s hard to resist all these impulses and cheat the machine, kind of. At least I’m aware of the syndrome, and I will be battling it.”
But at the end of it all, regardless of what lies ahead, Kilbey remains pretty thankful for all that’s gone by.
“You know, I wish I was a few rungs further up the ladder. I wish I was richer and more successful, and younger, and had a nicer car, and all that,” he says. “But on the other hand, I know a lot of geezers that started playing guitar at the same time as me, and now they’ve got really boring day jobs, and I get to stay at home and not do very much except make music.
“Whatever happens, I’ve kind of had a good run. I can’t deny that. I have had a good run. For 30 years, I’ve eked a living out of showbiz. Even if it stopped tomorrow, and I had to go and get a job in the post office as one of my relatives recently suggested to me – said I’d be a good postie, and I thought, well, okay – I have made 30 years out of strumming a guitar. You can’t be too bitter about that.”
The Church: This is not our city
THE City of Churches has never been in love with The Church.
That’s according to vocalist/bassist Steve Kilbey, who says he always enjoys visiting but never expects a huge welcome.
``Adelaide’s never made up its mind on The Church,’’ Kilbey says.
``Even when we were big, Adelaide was never crazy on us. They’ve never really bought it hook, line and sinker. We could be in Melbourne and they’d be going nuts and the next night we’d be in Adelaide and they’d be like `er, yeah, it’s The Church’. It’s funny, isn’t it.
``I think for our Adelaide concert we’ve sold 200 tickets and in Perth we’ve sold out two nights, which is like 1200.’’
The anomaly even applies to The Church’s most recent release, Untitled #23, which garnered rave reviews across the board except for one particular spot.
``At one stage on the (US) tour we got 100 reviews, a big folder of reviews came through, and I asked `are there any bad reviews?’ and they said `there’s one’. I asked `where’s it from?’ and they said `it’s from Adelaide’.
``The guy in Adelaide said `oh, you know, The Church, more boring stuff, same old thing, does anyone care any more?’. He got it wrong. I hope I meet up with him some day.’’
Regardless of Adelaide’s cold shoulder, The Church is currently on a roll, having toured the US and Canada earlier in the year in the afterglow of strong reviews for Untitled #23.
``One critic I can’t remember if it was in Chicago or Milwaukee said it was the in the trilogy of the three greatest albums of all time with Sgt Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon, which is so excessive it’s not even flattering, it’s in the realms of fantasy. Generally speaking, most of the reviews were glowing. Most of the people have been saying it’s a contender for album of the year.
``They all agreed that it was our best album ever or at least our best album for a long time. It’s been like pretty ecstatic, glowing reviews.’’
When quizzed on the special bond he shares with guitarists Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes who formed the band with Kilbey in 1980 along with ``new boy’’ drummer Tim Powles (``he’s only been in the band for 16 years’’), he balks at the mention of ``camaraderie’’.
``I think that’s stretching it. We have a working relationship, we like playing music together.’’
After three decades together, the church return to North America for a special 30th anniversary acoustic tour throughout April and May 2010.
“An Intimate Space” will include songs that span the length of the church’s epic creative trip from their debut in 1980 to their latest critically acclaimed 2009 album Untitled # 23. In a unique and unusual execution, the band will choose one song from each of their considerable album releases and perform them in reverse chronological order. This original show will have the fans gliding softly down through the years, opening with a track from their latest album Untitled #23 before embarking on a fantastic voyage through time ultimately arriving at their first Australian album Of Skins And Heart where it all began. This engaging and rare performance is not to be missed.
FREE CD
Every ticket holder will receive a free copy of Deadman’s Hand, the third EP from the Untitled #23 album. This EP will include the title track and unreleased tracks from the band’s secret vault, a must have for all church fans and collectors.
April 23 -- YMCA Boulton Center for the Performing Arts, Bay Shore, NY
Thanks for the 411! Bonobear and I got tickets for this show!
Yeah, we are so very there on April 23
Oh yes, their acoustic shows doth indeed rock!
The Church may be celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2010, but after catching the Australian quartet deliver a dynamic and wide-ranging performance Friday night before a packed house at the Coach House, longtime admirers can certainly be thankful this is no farewell tour.
The band kicked off its self-dubbed An Intimate Space in San Juan Capistrano with a fantastic set that, despite a few technical glitches in early on, quickly evolved into a dramatic, far-reaching celebration of the outfit’s distinctive sound and approach.
As promised in the promotion of the tour and the free colorful program passed out to fans as they stepped inside the venue (what a contrast to the $30 necessary to purchase a program at Paul McCartney’s shows earlier in the week at the Hollywood Bowl), the quartet — bassist-lead singer Steve Kilbey (pictured), guitarists Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes and drummer Tim Powles — started the show with a song (“Pangaea”) from their latest album (Untitled #23), then proceeded to offer other tunes from earlier albums in reverse chronological order as the night went on.
The group didn’t follow that formula perfectly, yet it was hard to argue with a set list that allowed the Church to play tracks that showcased its dreamy neo-psychedelic alt-rock in all its various shades.
There was edgy rock (“Space Needle”) with Kilbey kicking off the song singing to the lone accompaniment of his bass, which he strummed like a guitar before the rest of the group kicked in with force. And the band offered up a reworked version of its hit “Reptile” heavy on jazz leanings — except for the classical-styled solo Willson-Piper added on acoustic guitar.
While many casual fans likely counted the gauzy “Under the Milky Way,” the Church’s sole breakthrough hit stateside, as a favorite performance of the night, there were other selections that easily equaled it thanks to the band’s enthusiasm and lush arrangements. Indeed, all four members played a variety of instruments throughout the two-hour concert, adding countless layers to their material.
The beautiful “Ionian Blues” and “Invisible,” the Americana-tinged “Louisiana” (with Koppes adding textured mandolin) and the uptempo rocker “Comedown” came in the first set, while the second half of the show surprised at every turn thanks to the momentum of the performance. “Metropolis” allowed Willson-Piper to display his talents on flamenco guitar, while the use of 12-strings, keyboards and harmonica gave added life to that big smash “Under the Milky Way.”
During the first of the group’s several encores, Kilbey explained that because the Smashing Pumpkins had once covered a Church song, he and the group were going to return the favor — in this case, a powerful and haunting cover of “Disarm.” Truly this was a night to celebrate a great band whose music and songs still resonate. No wonder relatively few in the near-capacity crowd left before the concert came to a close at midnight.