Church - Psych-pop under the Milky Way

Australia has had a strange fate in the history of rock. For years, an entire continent remained buried under the Anglo-American prejudices of critics, who were ready to dig up unexpected talent even in Wales or Arkansas, but decidedly more reluctant to venture anywhere near Melbourne, Sydney and surroundings. For every band that managed to find success (though only after relocating to England), like Dead Can Dance, there were plenty more destined for a career spent largely in the shadows (from the Saints to Radio Birdman, from the Birthday Party to the Hoodoo Gurus, from the Go Betweens to the Died Pretty). Later, the rise of a shaman of the calibre of Nick Cave helped bring renewed attention to this vast oceanic land. Back in the 80s, however, a meteor had already passed through Sydney, destined to leave a luminous trail across the charts and radio playlists of half the world. A meteor that, to be precise, traveled along the nebulae of the Milky Way. "Under The Milky Way" by Church was one of the most dazzling pop singles of the decade - proof of the band's prodigious ability to blend catchy refrains with a delicate psychedelia, built more on the hypnotic quality of sound than on the aggression typical of the Californian neo-acid scene of Dream Syndicate and (later) Thin White Rope. But that's far from the whole story. It's worth telling the rest of the tale of these pop bards from Oceania - the part that remained in the shadows, obscured by the prejudices and ostracism mentioned above.

Church formed in Sydney in 1980. The band's future leader, singer and bassist Steve Kilbey, recruited guitarist Peter Koppes and drummer Nick Ward. Before the band's debut, a second guitarist joined the trio: Marty Willson-Piper, from Liverpool, England. This lineup gave life to Of Skin and Heart (1981), an evocative collection of songs lit up by acidic Television-style guitar work, the Beatles-esque melodicism of "The Unguarded Moment", and the atmospheric pop of "Tear It All Away". Despite some unevenness, the album already reveals some of the band's defining traits: a sturdy rhythm section, tender guitar interplay indebted to the "jangling" style of the Byrds, enchanted atmospheres bordering on dream-pop, and a decadent mood that, in Kilbey's vocals too, recalls glam-era Bowie and Verlaine's Marquee Moon.

Having replaced Ward on drums with Richard Ploog, the band returned a year later with The Blurred Crusade, which brought their sound to maturity, offering psychedelic ballads of undeniable theatrical charm, such as "Almost With You" and "When You Were Mine", in which the first seeds of their later "dark" leanings also begin to surface. Church's atmospheric psychedelia grows at once more expansive and closer to new wave territory.

Seance (1983) continues along this path, injecting a bit more melody but losing some of the lyrical intensity along the way. The retro psychedelia of "Travel by Thought" is more a mood than a song, and the single "Electric Lash" fails to leave much of a mark, but tracks like "Fly" and "Dropping Names" bring into focus an increasingly refined and evocative style.

The band's output during this period is rather fragmentary: Remote Luxury (1984) tries to bring some order by collecting a few of the Eps they'd released, showcasing in particular a striking track like "Shadow Cabinet" (vibrant guitars, powerful bass, organ solo). The album lands the group a deal with American major Warner Bros., which releases the excellent follow-up Heyday (1986), preceded by the equally strong single "Already Yesterday". Having refined and smoothed out the babel of styles found on their earlier records, the Australian band crowns its "pop-psychedelic" period with a precious album that finally brings Kilbey and co. to the attention of (at the very least) the indie-rock audience. The dreamy guitar work of "Myrrh" pairs with a fateful crooning worthy of decadent masters like Bowie, Ferry and Sylvian. "Tristesse" gives off massive doses of melancholy, though drenched in airy sounds that move ever closer to those of their masters, the Beatles. "Tantalized" violently speeds up the tempo, with near-dance pulses, increasingly urgent guitars and r'n'b horns. The Church even indulge in a purely instrumental experiment ("Happy Hunting Ground"). The band's "Byrds-ian" imprint, however, remains as deep as ever, as shown by the single "Columbus". Overall, a surprisingly sharp record, further helped by Peter Walsh's skillful production.

Meanwhile, Kilbey launches a solo career that will yield a handful of albums - from Unearthed (1987) to Earthed (1988), from Slow Crack (1988) to Remindlessness (1990), from Narcosis (1997) to Gilt Trip (1997). The Church frontman will later also try his hand at three parallel projects - Hex, Jack Frost and Fake - without ever truly shining. Equally mediocre will prove to be the solo outings of Willson-Piper (from 1987's In Reflection to the following year's Art Attack, from 1989's Rhyme to Spirit Level three years later) and of Koppes (Manchild & Myth in 1988 and From The Well in 1989).

Having moved to Arista, the Church enlist two seasoned guitarists, Danny Kortchmar and Waddy Wachtel, to record Starfish (1988), which remains to this day their best-selling album. Not all that glitters is gold on Starfish: in part, the Church abandon the psychedelic atmospheres of their earlier work in favor of a more polished pop sound. But you only need to get to track number 2 to be left wide-eyed (or wide-eared). As already mentioned, "Under The Milky Way" is one of the great pop-song masterpieces not just of the Church's career, but of the entire Eighties. First there's the melody, worthy of the tenderest dreams of the celebrated Lennon-McCartney partnership. Then there's the guitar arpeggio which, with its starry crackle, immediately draws you into another dimension - dreamlike, metaphysical, galactic, call it what you will... If Verlaine strummed his serenades to the moon ("Marquee Moon"), the Church play "under the Milky Way". And for once, it isn't a synth leading the way on this cosmic journey, but the most "human" of instruments: a guitar, an acoustic one at that, even accompanied by an epic solo, with the guitar played with an E-Bow to mimic the sound of bagpipes. And then there's Kilbey's lyric, which pours out melancholy by the handful: “And it’s something quite peculiar/ Something shimmering and white/ Leads you here despite your destination/ Under the Milky Way tonight”.

The soft "sixties" pop of "Spark", brushed with Willson-Piper's guitar, and the magnetic electronics of "Reptile" add a further touch of elegance to a record unfairly branded by some critics as the Church's "conversion" to chart-friendly pop. As so often happens, indie-rock bands seem bound by a curse: to keep their credibility, they're condemned never to achieve success. But if the Church's sound was finally able to find a vehicle for reaching the wider world, and if many fans were later able to dig into the rest of their catalogue, much of the credit goes to the gentle melodies of Starfish.

The three following records, Good Afternoon Fix (1990), A Quick Smoke At Spot's (Mushroom, 1991) and Priest Aura (1992), seem however to mark a tired phase in the band's career. The third, recorded with former Patti Smith Group drummer Jay Dee Daugherty in place of Ploog, yields at least a couple of atmospheric lullabies ("Ripple", "Feel"), but that isn't enough to stop the band's diaspora: Daugherty and Koppes, too, jump ship.

The trauma, however, will do the Church good, as they re-emerge with a partly new sound, influenced above all by the ambient-gothic of the Projekt galaxy (Lycia, Black Tape For A Blue Girl) and by the celestial slo-core of Talk Talk. Sometime Anywhere (1994), featuring just Kilbey and Willson-Piper alongside Tim Powles (still listed, however, as an unofficial band member), is a first step down this darker path, marked above all by a greater reliance on "stretched-out" instrumentals. Still, a certain stylistic variety persists, letting the band range from the ethnic-instrumental digression of "Eastern" to the bewitching ballad "Day Of The Dead", from the psychedelic pop of "Business Woman" to the epic rock of "Lost My Touch". The record marks one of the Church's boldest experimental excursions, but also their definitive split from Arista, which, disappointed by the poor commercial results, terminates their contract.

But it's the following Magician Among The Spirits (1996), recorded for new label Deep Karma, that stands as the true masterpiece of this new era. With Tim Powles now a permanent fixture on drums, the Australian band fully unleashes that dramatic, dark streak that had always lingered in the background of their ballads. "Classic" psychedelia (Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead) thus marries the gothic tradition (from Joy Division to Lycia), noir singer-songwriting (Nick Cave, Smog) and orchestral pop (Beatles, Byrds). What was once timid and muted now becomes grand and solemn, starting with the title track: fourteen minutes of slowed-down tribal-ambient psychedelia, with an obsessive bassline and scattered cacophonies; Kilbey's vocals clearly nod to the most languid Jim Morrison, but the most obvious reference point is perhaps Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful Of Secrets". Emblematic from its title alone is also "Grandiose", which wouldn't be out of place on "Atom Heart Mother", with Willson-Piper's Young-esque guitar solo immersed in ecstatic atmospheres, amid violins, mellotron, dissonant choirs and cosmic echoes.

On Dorian Gray Kilbey shows his fiercest side in "It Could Be Anyone": eight minutes of pure nightmare, with horror-movie piano figures, possessed strings à la Nyman, lascivious tom-tom percussion, paranoid guitar drones, filtered and distorted vocals, and a weave of voices and atmospheres (towards the end, there's even an echo of the monolith's vocalise from György Ligeti's "2001: A Space Odyssey"). It's instead a mad preacher à la Cave who intones the apocalyptic "Welcome" over a bed of decadent keyboards, and it's again the shadow of the Melbourne bard hovering over the mournful ballad "Why Don't You Love Me". But the Church set no limits on their imagination: "The Further Adventures Of The Time Being" is a strange nursery rhyme carried by a simple arrangement that fades into a long "ambient" agony; "Romany Caravan" is an instrumental that even blends gypsy rhythms with violin and harpsichord phrases and swirling acoustic and electric guitars; "Afterimage" is another hypnotic, Eno-esque instrumental, built solely from piano reverb, acoustic guitar arpeggios and ethereal synth phrases. Keeping a link to the past is the refined pop of tracks like "Comedown" and "Lady Boy", which could have come straight out of the Heyday or Starfish sessions.

Finally free from record-label pressure and commercial constraints, the Church reach, with Magician Among The Spirits, the experimental peak of their art.

On Hologram Of Baal (1998) the sound seems to return to the "airy" feel of their early work, just somewhat dimmed by the years. The single "Louisiana", in any case, is a decent ballad in their classic style. What never goes missing is the psychedelic soul that has always been the band's faithful companion: "For us psychedelia is an attitude, a way of positioning ourselves not just as musicians but in life," Willson-Piper explained. "We don't like talking much about the details that make up our art: what we aim for is a kind of empathic communication with the listener".

A Box Of Birds (1999) collects assorted covers, recorded in Sweden, where Willson-Piper has by now relocated (from the Beatles' "It's All Too Much" to Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer", via Television's "Friction"). But only a die-hard fan could really get excited about it.

After Everything Now This (2002), on the other hand, is another showcase for their fateful, decadent sound. Hypnotic minimalism dominates, with Kilbey's vocals ever more whispered and intangible. The bewitching "Numbers", the romantic title track (close to certain 4AD-style sounds), the dreamlike enchantment of "Invisible" and the jingle-jangle of "Chromium" redeem a few moments of preciousness and, ultimately, tedium.

But the new century has begun, and the Church, somehow, are still here. Ready to pick up their guitars and trap us once again in the hypnotic spirals of their ballads.

After the mediocre Forget Yourself (2004) comes Uninvited, Like The Clouds (2006), heralded only by a few enthusiastic fanzines as the ideal summa of the Sydney band's twenty-five years. The sonic spectrum, indeed, proves very broad: pop melodies, romantic languor, ambient expanses, synth nebulae, drones and near-post-rock guitar textures chase one another across the 12 tracks, occasionally letting that "something quite peculiar" flicker through - the very thing that once lit up the night under the Milky Way.

What's missing, if anything, is fluidity, along with an overarching vision able to give the whole project cohesion: Kilbey can still write songs, but rather than drawing on the lifeblood of inspiration, he leans on class and craft, aided also by carefully calibrated arrangements featuring strings, keyboards, organs and mandolins. The band's backbone, however, remains the interplay between Kilbey's own hushed baritone and the blazing guitar work of the Peter Koppes-Marty Willson-Piper duo, bolstered by Tim Powles's precise drumming.

Broad sonic spectrum, as mentioned, in a continuous alternation of opposing moods: take for example the opener "Block", an inexorable descent into the abyss of the psyche over a pitch-black vortex of guitars, and the most pop track of the bunch, the sun-drenched "Easy", merrily strummed on mandolin strings. Or again the sinister sonic magma of "Space Needle" (which leaves plenty of latter-day wavers eating dust) and the narcotic swoon of "Untoward", set against the catchy exuberance of "Unified Field" (a potential single, though it lacks a worthy refrain) or the mesmerizing sweetness of "She'll Come Back For You Tomorrow", which lands one of the album's clearest melodies.

Mood swings, then, but also sudden sonic U-turns. While atmospheric psych-pop prevails, paired with lysergic lullabies in the style of Echo & The Bunnymen (see the dreamy ballad "Day 5"), there's no shortage of eccentric episodes either: from the pastoral psychedelia à-la Pink Floyd of "Never Before", which sounds as if torn from the songbook of David Gilmour, to the spatial blues of "Real Toggle Action", all the way to the classically-inclined "Song To Go", a true gem of the album, enriched by a pump organ and punctuated by Sophie Glasson's splendid cello.

It's unlikely that Uninvited, Like The Clouds will win the Australian bards any new fans, but twenty-five years after their debut, Kilbey and co.'s class hasn't faded.

The next project, El Momento Siguiente (2007), continues along the lines of El Momento Descuidado from two years earlier, presenting new acoustic versions of some of their classics, plus a few unreleased tracks, such as the delightful "Song In The Afternoon", the instrumental "Comeuppance" acting as closing credits, and the hallucinated "Bordello".

With Untitled #23 (2009) the Australian band celebrates thirty years of career, edging back toward their best form. The sound seems unchanged, although the Pink Floyd-esque atmospheres have evolved along the lines of Galaxie 500 and Air, but it's the high quality of the compositions that convinces most.

"On Angel Street" stands out not only for its minimal sounds but also for its lived-in, poetic lyrics. The single "Pangaea", by contrast, is an authentic pop song, sunny, seductive and devoid of epic tones.

Each track retains distinctive traits: "Cobalt Blue" introduces faint jazz-lounge touches within folds of space-rock sonorities, while "Happenstance" harks back to the days of Blurred Crusade, highlighting the maturity the musicians have reached. Special praise goes to Tim Powles, who within a melodic, refined context shows off a sonic power worthy of John Bonham, lending energy even to the album's most lyrical moments, like "Sunken Sun".

Among the remaining tracks, "Space Saviour" and "Deadman's Hand" tastefully reaffirm the band's good verve, while "Anchorage" raises the album's climax with a robust drum attack, fiery guitars and psychedelic riffs. The suspended cadence of the following "Lunar" heralds another glorious moment on the record, namely "Operetta", a successful rock symphony that avoids baroque excess, instead displaying a commendable, refined lyricism.

The absolute freedom, even on the production side, seems to have given the band the energy and passion needed to recapture the audience's attention: thirty years of career could not have been celebrated better.

Three years later came the new album, Further/Deeper, marked by the departure of Marty Willson-Piper and the arrival of Ian Haug (ex-Powderfinger), a project with slightly hazier but also more classic atmospheres. Recognizable yet lacking a standout track, the Australians' twenty-fourth album hints at innovations without fully following through; what really hurts is the excessive length, which doesn't do favors to the otherwise pleasant repetitiveness of the dream-pop/psychedelic formula.

Greater cohesion and a tighter approach consolidate the band's new course with a decidedly livelier album: Man Woman Life Death Infinity blends Byrds, Bowie and Pink Floyd with a verve reminiscent of their early days. Tracks like "Before the Deluge" and "Undersea" rightfully join the band's finest songbook, alongside a greater cohesion of the new lineup, with which Steve Kilbey begins working on a new record.

The genesis of The Hypnogogue faced no shortage of difficulties, between the restrictions caused by Covid-19 and the wildfires that ravaged Australia for years, but the result is one of the Church's most accomplished works. The Australians' 26th album is not only their most overtly progressive-rock-leaning record, but also the band's first concept album: its thirteen tracks tell the story of a rock musician fascinated by a machine invented by a Korean scientist that extracts music from dreams.

Kilbey and co. put together an album that's stylistically recognizable yet different and conceptually self-contained; behind the echoes and reverbs of Kilbey's voice lie guitar delights worthy of their finest days, namely when the Church would grasp the secrets of goth-rock and return them to the purity of light with enchanting electro-acoustic sonorities ("Albert Ross"), or when they embraced the energy of new wave with a light guitar scratch ("Antarctica").

Simpler, more predictable pages ("I Think I Knew", "Flickering Lights" and "Thorn") form a single body together with finely crafted, ambitious ones (the guitar triumph of "No Other You" and the refined, opulent psych-rock tone of "Succulent"), the whole enlivened by lyrically powerful songs ("C'est La Vie", "Aerodrome" and the title track), restoring to the band all the visionary power and vigor of their finest pages.

Sold during the 2023 American tour and finally released in 2024, Eros Zeta And The Perfumed Guitars is not a mere companion piece to the excellent The Hypnogogue, but the consecration of the band's new lineup. The record revisits the literary and musical thread of the previous album; the songs focus attention more on instrumental cohesion, with a more rock-oriented brio that ultimately delivers a few pleasant surprises. The one-two punch at the opening is decidedly convincing, the languid psych-rock ballad "Realm Of Minor Angels" unfolds along decidedly romantic and decadent lines, but it's "Pleasure" that earns a place among the band's finest songs: its sparkling guitar notes and thoroughly psychedelic settings create a potent humus, which the splendid guitar riff and Kilbey's dark voice turn into a little gem worthy of albums like Remote Luxury. Pop temptations ("Amanita"), beat nuances ("Korea") and glam touches ("Song 18") refresh the Australian band's primary musical sources.

There’s also a dark side to Eros Zeta And The Perfumed Guitars, felt in the more acidic, post-punk atmospheres of “The Immediate Future”, in the dream-pop vibrations of “2054”, and in the dreamlike instrumental layering of “Sublimated In Song”. The Church take risks and double down, first with electronics and fuzz guitars on “Song From The Machine Age”, then with blues on the thrilling “The Weather”, and deliver one of their finest pages with a mini-suite adorned with prog leftovers, 80s Berlin decadence and jam-session psychedelia across the ten minutes of “A Strange Past”. Eros Zeta And The Perfumed Guitars is an album that ultimately seals the grace period of a band in constant pursuit of the perfect melody, of that one song to hand down through time for a new pagan cult.

Contributions by Gianfranco Marmoro (“Untitled #23”, “The Hypnogogue”, “Eros Zeta And The Perfumed Guitars”)

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