Australian alternative rock band, The Church, was one of the bands the cool kids at Queensland Uni listened to in the 1980s.
The Séance or Starfish album covers were always lying around with Sinead’s The Lion and the Cobra or The Jungle Brothers or the KLF while you sat on ancient carpet smoking and discussing Derrida, ecofeminism, the ‘facists’ bringing in tertiary fees and the cheapest frozen pizza subs.
Introduced to the band when I was a UQ journalism student, my favourite Church song was Electric Lash with its tinkly piano opening, thumping drums, Kilbey’s dreamy psychedelic English accented lyrics and three electric guitars.
My friends and I learned the words to Electric Lash and danced and sang the words to each other at many an 80s house party.
As a fan, I was surprised when a friend told me The Church’s lead singer Steve Kilbey was performing a one-man show The Church Singles 1980-1992 in Gympie this month on his regional Queensland tour.
Steve Kilbey? Touring regional Queensland?
Kilbey told the Gympie audience words to the effect of: ‘What was cool is not, what was not cool is now cool. Everything is different now’ and we kinda knew what he meant.
Steve Kilby in Gympie pop up venue qube226. PHOTO: Vivienne Wynter
Maybe Kilbey and other big name artists can book smaller venues outside big cities and be confident they’ll sell out in the post-Covid world where live music is drawing smaller audiences?
Whatever the reason, we got to sit one row back from the front in a cool pop-up venue qube226 in Mary Street, Gympie, with around 50 locals who’d paid $59 for an intimate evening with Steve Kilbey, backed only by his 12-string acoustic guitar.
In a two-hour set, Kilbey played the hits and misses, interspersed with witty stories of how the songs came to be, what it was like being semi-famous in the 80s and endearingly, what it was like for him being an English child in Dapto, New South Wales.
The audience sang along softly to Unguarded Moment, I’m almost with you, Under the Milky Way and Metropolis. Kilbey sweetly remarked ‘I’m really feeling something here in this room’ and for a minute, Gympie was cool.
Solo and acoustic
The sound was thinner without a band and Kilbey humbly said ‘I feel inadequate without the band on some songs’ but it didn’t matter. It was Steve Kilbey!
His melodic voice is the same: a breathy alto with dips into the deeper voice he uses sparingly to great effect.
There was some mumbly humming in the musical bridges an acoustic guitar can’t always fill, but then he’d play the recognisable guitar riffs that distinguish The Church as an emblematic indie Australian band.
The Church are an emblematic indie Australian band
What did surprise me was Steve Kilby the raconteur. His storytelling, audience banter and joke cracking played well. My favourite story was about the time he passed on the chance to sleep with a bottle blonde after the show because he had a flash of inspiration leading to a ‘song writing emergency’. He’s seemingly an open book, so the stories flowed of the 80s music scene where managers paid you in wads of cash in brown paper bags and speed was cheap.
Eyebrows were raised.
No surprise when Kilbey’s on the record about his heroin habit and being ‘tired and emotional from 1990 to 2001’.
That’s all behind him now and in his 70th year, Kilbey cuts a trim figure, still handsome with a sartorial bearing. His mental sharpness and light-heartedness almost make it hard to believe he spent the 90s getting wasted. There’s no sign of dissipation on that chiselled face. How do these hard-living musos get away with it?
Kilbey’s barely changed since I saw him perform in ‘A thousand kisses deep: a tribute to Leonard Cohen’ at the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley in 2007.
I saw that show with a young teenage friend who asked me as we stood in the foyer afterwards: ‘What’s the big deal about The Church anyway? I’ve never heard of their songs.’
I burst into a loud, enthusiastic rendition of Electric Lash, dancing 80s style with wildly swinging arms and a little march on the spot. Half way through the song, I noticed my companion had a funny look on her face and was staring over my shoulder at someone past me.
I turned around and there was Steve Kilbey, leaning on the bar, watching my ridiculous performance with a smile on his face.
Upcoming tour dates
Steve Kilbey performs The Church Singles 1980-1992 on two more Queensland dates in Eumundi and Coolangatta this weekend  then takes The Church (with full band) on a national tour in November.
Kilbey’s the only original band member but has an impressive line-up in the band with drummer and producer Tim Powles, guitarist Ian Haug, formerly of Powderfinger, multi-instrumentalist talent Jeffrey Cain and Ashley Naylor, guitarist and long-time member of Paul Kelly’s touring band.
That ubiquitous Seance album was in many 80s student houses.
PHOTO at top of story of Steve Kilbey performing in Gympie by Gordon Maudsley.
