The Church - C or D/S&D/CB&TT

While I'm as fond of Marty as the next Church obsessive, I have to point out that Further/Deeper is an unqualified triumph and the band's most cohesive and ambitious album in years. Perhaps MWP's "unavailability" was for the best?

I've been digging back into my Church albums for a couple weeks since reading Brett Milano’s Don’t All Thank Me At Once: The Lost Pop Genius of Scott Miller (2015). I had no idea that Donnette Thayer dumped Scott Miller for Steve Kilbey, and poor Scott had to play shows with Kilbey distracting the crowds. I was vaguely aware that she left and did a couple albums with Kilbey as Hex but never heard them.

The Heyday cassette was my first exposure to The Church and still a favorite. By '88 I was into Pixies/Sonic Youth/Dinosaur, and thought Starfish was garbage. It took a decade to warm up to it. I like the sound of some of the post-1996 work, but songs aren't really sticking, though the Box of Birds covers are great. Listening to "Chrome Injury" again makes me think they were fans of early Ultravox! and Japan for a bit. I realized my version of Of Skins and Heart is missing "Too Fast For You," "Tear It All Away" and "Sisters" so had to fix that. Plus the Sing-Songs EP from '82.

fnb - you'd probably like priest = aura?!

and hold on one second -- apparently the church are playing all of the blurred crusade on tour now? without marty? or is he back? i'm thinking of going regardless but i'd be extra excited if i knew i'd share air with marty again.

Entire show from last month...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxql5gJdhOw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly6e-SllHLY

Kilbey talked "Under the Milky Way"

http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2016/08/the-church-s-steve-kilbey-on-the-strange-second-life-of-under-the-milky-way

Happy birthday Steve!

i’m 62 and i dont give a flying fuck!

New album soon, new US tour dates, etc.

http://thechurchband.net/

The recent Kilbey Kennedy album is Quite Good.

Agreed, that whole sideline of releases has been very enjoyable.

Continuing Marty Absence? Marty Wilson-Piper: Further Days Without Him? The story dies, Arthur.

Anyway, new song is amazing. And the upcoming North American tour is pretty comprehensive! Definitely going to a couple of the Texas shows.

i was also wondering about the continuing marty absence
my friend who lives in asheville saw that they are offering a $99 "VIP meet & greet"
that's what made me wonder if marty was going to be there or not (i assume not?)

I don't think he's involved in the new album or the tour, no. New song has a real Bowie thing going on with the vocals.

Yeah I think Marty's out, period.

That's a shame, although the last album was pretty strong. I'm not sure this is down to the departure of MWP but Kilbey's lyrical style seems to have shifted to a more straightforward rock and roll sort of idiom. Maybe it's the new guy's influence? I mean, it works... but it's different.

A full 1982 show just showed up on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxMXeZgjyxE

Man, that'll be a flashback and a half.

many many thank yous for posting
the sound and video are both quite clear for being so old!

Awesome show! Damn, they were a tight unit, weren't they? And I hadn't known that Marty ever played a Stratocaster! o_O

whoa @ kilbey's post on the making of under the milky way etc, missed that the first time around. fascinating stuff. while i hesitate to tell tales out of school (and those LA guys sound like tools), steve himself was a colossal conceited jerk when i interviewed him a couple years later. but i kinda liked him anyway and still love his music.

I like the additional gothness they throw on the vocals in this set. Also like Vast Halo says, they were really tight! This is what, 2-3 years after they formed?

new album was released last week and ~ shocker ~ it rules

Indeed it does.

I'll take the opposing view - this album is ok but it feels a bit too laid back and doesn't have near the high points of "Further/Deeper". But then I didn't rate "Untitled #23" either. Maybe I just miss the rush of stuff like "Unified Field" and "Block" from "Uninvited Like The Clouds".

o man, i loooooooove untitled #23. total hyperbole potentially but it's hard for me to think off the top of my head of an album that awesome released 18 years after a band's debut. that's one of my favorite eras of their music. i'm hoping they have some involvement with annihilation the way they "soundtracked" shriek

28 years.

28 years! straight = bent. reflexive mistaken underestimates when it comes to kilbey & co even among hopeless fanboys

it's easier to say fans than fanboys

LL is right, there's Steve Kilboys and Marty-Wilson Pipettes who are equally hopeless

I really like the new album. Is it bad to admit I'm happy that it's about 45 minutes long instead of 60+? I love the last two records but I rarely make it to the end of them unless I start halfway through. I miss the narrative lyrics of old, but the new record has sort of playful Jabberwocky kinda thing instead, which works really well with the music. It sounds like they're having fun! The openness of Magician Among the Spirits era stuff but folded down into short pop songs.

Marty-Wilson Pipettes
it me!

xpost I'm with you. I like the brevity on this one.

there's only one song on the album longer than five minutes!

I really love this record!

"before the deluge" could be a robyn hitchcock song

Yeah, that's true. Don't forget Robyn and Steve toured together, maybe it was one they whipped up.

A few more spins and the clear winners for me are "Another Century", "Undersea", "Before The Deluge", "A Face In The Film" and the brilliant closer "Dark Waltz".

The only weak track for me is In Your Fog, the first six tracks are the best run of Church album tracks since Spark -> Hotel Womb on Starfish.

Couple nights ago in Sydney. Rock on!

Great interview with an unfiltered SK on The Hustle podcast
https://thehustle.podbean.com/e/episode-147-steve-kilbey-of-the-church/

thanks for the link! that was a great interview, mainly because it was very long and the interviewer let him talk a lot. no further elaboration on the mysterious exit of marty wilson-piper; he just up and left and they haven't spoken since. loved how he was asked for a great rock'n'roll story and told a ghost story instead.

whoa this thread was started 9/9/01

i have a general question about this band: how were they portrayed in marketing/media in the early years, like 1980-84? were they "new wave" or ?

Early post/alt-rock lumped in with bands like The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Soft Boys, etc.

they were considered psych revival, no?

Maybe in the same way as Bangles and Dream Syndicate?

compared to psych revival... maybe as much as R.E.M. were compared to jangle pop via The Birds

I first heard them on 120 Minutes - it was something off Heyday and it really caught my ear. I seem to recall them in what trivial pursuit called the “Art Rock” category

oh boy
i have been having some conversations about "art rock"

so far we have:

early alt-rock
psych revival/Byrdsy rock
"art rock"

does this mean "definitely NOT new wave" or ?

So much of that was all lumped together in the overused "college rock" category in the mid-80s American music press. If you were in a band that had at least one Rickenbacker 12-string guitar in it, you were "Byrds/psych revival" regardless if you were R.E.M., Let's Active, Game Theory, The Church, heck even The Smiths.

Anyway, the video for "Tantalized" was one of the first videos on 120 Minutes in 1986 (never heard them on the radio until UTMW). They opened up for Echo & The Bunnymen here (and completely blew them off the stage)

yeah i know that -- and what i am wondering is how they were portrayed before they were lumped into "college rock"
how were they characterized in their own marketing and in the media before that? i still see promos for super old church albums at the record store and afaict, that is a signal that they were widely distributed. just wondering how they were marketed during those early years.

it's possible that their lack of easy categorization contributed to their "college rock" lumping

Them also being an Aussie band must have made the marketing extra tuff on the suits.

Kilbey is always good for some quotes about this early time.

And with producer Bob Clearmountain handling production, the band has a guy who could bring out the nuances in the band’s moody music.

“He was the number one guy in the whole world and somehow someone talked him into working with us,” says Kilbey. “I don’t know why he did. He was an amazing producer. When the album was finished and mastered, [the record label] EMI rang me up and said there was a cassette waiting. I went and picked it up and went back to the market and my friend had a brand new invention called a Sony Walkman. I put it on, and I couldn’t believe our album sounded like that. It sounded like a million dollars. I remember other bands telling me, ‘How did you bastards get it to sound like that?’ It was rich and warm and organic. Clearmountain did a wonderful job.”

But it never came out in America because the higher-ups at Capitol Records thought Americans wouldn’t like it.

“There’s no way I would write a hit they would like,” Kilbey says. “You have to imagine what a guy working at Capitol Records in 1981 was like. There was no R.E.M. There was nothing. There were a few things, but he was already stuck in 1979 anyway. They’re always two years behind. That’s what [singer-guitarist] Robyn Hitchcock said to me. He said, ‘These guys sign you up in 1984 and they’re in 1982 and their idea of what 1982 is 1980 anyway. So by the time the record comes out, they’re five years behind the times.’ These guys were hopeless. They’re like women who see a guy and want to change that guy when they get him. EMI/Capitol looked at the Church and saw what we were — young scruffy indie guys playing psychedelic music. They wanted to turn us into the Thompson Twins. Why would they want that?”

An ill-fated tour with Duran Duran only added insult to injury; Kilbey pulled the group off the Duran Duran tour after only a few dates.

“Their audience hated us,” he says. “It was 1982 and there was no reference to this. There was nobody else out there with long hair playing 12-string guitars trying to invoke psychedelia whatever that is. It was like a One Direction crowd. It was like putting Fleet Foxes on before One Direction. That wouldn’t go down very well. We were supposed to do a whole tour and after 10 gigs, I went, ‘That’s it. I’m not putting myself or my band through this.’ We couldn’t convert [the fans]. There was no conversion going on. Not one girl wetting her pants over [Duran Duran drummer] Roger Taylor would go home and buy the Church’s album. It’s not happening."