Steve Kilbey likes to swim. The Church frontman does a lot of thinking in the water. He’s been known to compile an album’s worth of lyrics over a few days in the pool. Creatively, he’s like a shark. He has to constantly move forward or it’s lights out for his muse, the music and the band.
Kilbey has just turned 70. As always, he’s thinking about the next thing. As well as a national tour later in the year, that might be a book, a painting or a song. He’s pretty much always been like that. Throw in Kilbey’s solo albums, his various musical collaborations, the paintings, the poetry and the prose and you’re looking at a bona fide national treasure.
Despite this interest in all aspects of the arts, the music bug bit him the hardest. As a pre-teen Kilbey saw his first live band. In that moment, his destiny was laid out. Not long afterwards he harangued his dad into buying him a bass guitar.
“At 11 years old I saw The Easybeats and it blew my mind,” he recalls. “I wanted to be doing that. Who wouldn’t? It seemed like I was the only boy in the audience as well. They were my favourite band. I loved their songs. I had them all as singles. At night when my parents would turn the record player off, I used to lie next to it and spin the records manually to listen to the music coming off the grooves.”
Earlier this year, The Church released their 25th studio album, Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars. In 2023 they released The Hypnogogue, and there’s a new record working its way to completion as you read this.
But in 2024 the old and the new can cohabitate quite easily. While new music is always front of mind for Kilbey, his record company realises how important it is to keep The Church’s back catalogue available. Sure, it’s great to be able to stream the band’s music at any time you feel the urge, but many fans of The Church want to bask in the tactile rush of freshly pressed vinyl.
This has led to The Church announcing The Already Yesterday Tour, while their label is re-releasing the group’s seminal first four albums – Of Skins & Heart, The Blurred Crusade, Séance and Heyday – on vinyl for the first time in years. Better still, each of the records has been pressed on a coloured platter with original covers and inserts.
“I’m definitely glad that people still love them after all these years,” Kilbey explains. “What more could you ask for? I feel quite ambivalent. I’m not thrilled, nor am I disapproving. I guess I’m glad people can get them again if they want them. The Blurred Crusade still sounds amazing thanks to Bob Clearmountain’s mix. Seance is the black sheep. It was very unpopular at the time whereas Heyday gets a lotta love still.
“I don’t really listen to them much, if at all. There are certain things that definitely bug me. But, on the other hand, they were a lot better than some of the other stuff that came out back then.”
For many people, those first four albums are the records on which the legend of The Church was built. Scanning over the track listing you can understand why The Church made inroads around the globe. Unguarded Moment, Almost With You, You Took, Tantalised – The Church had already released a clutch of classic songs well before Under the Milky Way was ever dreamt of.
To coincide with the records’ re-release, the upcoming national tour will feature a selection of songs handpicked for the set list from each album. The group’s press release promises “a musical journey from the very beginning right through to the present day”.
“Some of these songs are still fun to play,” Kilbey admits. “Others are not so much fun and are done out of obligation. Most of them, though, yeah, they still hold up.”
If the 1981 single The Unguarded Moment from Of Skins and Heart got them on TV’s Countdown and galvanised a fan base, it was 1985’s Heyday album that took them into a new sonic dimension and set the course for their future. Seeing them on the Heyday tour one night at the Mansfield Tavern remains burned in the memory banks. It made a huge impact on Powderfinger’s Ian Haug, too, who now plays guitar in the band.
“I remember we went to Perth in the ’80s,” Kilbey recalls. “We did this week of gigs there before Heyday came out and we had 20 or 30 people there each night, going ‘You guys are so washed up. There’s this new band called The Triffids. They’re a real band. You guys are so last year’s thing. It’s over. Why don’t you give up?’ That was the basic message. Literally people were saying that, and figuratively in the non-attendance.
“We made Heyday and went back to Perth and I remember it as a yardstick. We did a week there and every night it was people falling out of the roof, going nuts. With one album, and the reviews were going crazy. Suddenly there was a whole new audience going, ‘Wow! Look at what these guys are doing. Just when we thought they were finished’.”
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Forty-odd years later, The Church has a lot of petrol left in the tank. In 2024 the band now comprises Kilbey out front on bass and vocals alongside drummers Tim Powles and Nicholas Meredith, American multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Cain, the aforementioned Ian Haug and relatively new recruit, guitarist Ash Naylor.
After seeing the band last year and writing about the experience for Rolling Stone, The Church in concert can be summed up in a single word: Magnificent. They are not to be missed.
Coloured vinyl editions – Of Skins & Heart (white), The Blurred Crusade (blue), Séance (pink) are out now. Heyday (Red) is out in November through The Sound Of Vinyl/Universal. The Already Yesterday Tour kicks off in Sydney on November 23 with dates including the Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, on November 29, and Adelaide’s Hindley Street Music Hall on December 7. facetofacetouring.com.au
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