Playing by the hymn book
Australian legends celebrate a timeless album but without the signature shirts.
When it came to making hits, it might have seemed The Church never really had a prayer. After all, the quartet started out playing 1960s-influenced psychedelic rock in 1980 punk- and Oz-rock Sydney.
“I’ve always tried to resist the zeitgeist,” says bassist-singer Steve Kilbey.
Their 1981 single Unguarded Moment, all jangling Byrds-ian guitars delivered by four moody blokes in paisley shirts, got them a ticket to ride into the charts on both sides of the Tasman.
But it wasn’t until the 1988 fifth album, Starfish, and the global breakthrough of single Under the Milky Way, that they really had a moment. The Church have continued with a string of albums, foundered, reformed, and carried on with a line-up now featuring just two original members – Kilbey and guitarist Peter Koppes.
Having last crossed the Ditch for a winery show alongside Devo and Simple Minds, The Church return for a 30th anniversary Starfish show, playing the entire album and roaming around the 17-album catalogue in the show’s second half.
So, it’s just the original Starfish, not the reissue with the 12 bonus tracks?
Ha ha. That’s correct. I like doing albums in their entirety. There’s something satisfying about it. Our goal is to recreate the album as faithfully as we can but add more oomph. Live, it’s got a lot more oomph and mojo than the recorded version, but doesn’t stray from those arrangements.
Under the Milky Way becoming a, well, astronomical hit – an accident?
Absolutely. It was always the dark horse on the record. It wasn’t until the record company heard it they went, “That song is the hit. That is it. That’s the hit.” No one in the band had really thought that.
It’s ended up in lots of places since – on the Donnie Darko soundtrack. Here, Strawpeople covered it …
The New Zealand guys? Yes, that was good. I gave that one my blessing. That was one of the early covers. If you go searching on YouTube for different versions, you’ll get sick of looking. There are people doing tutorials with it. Sia’s done it, The Killers have done it. I just sort of got lucky with that one.
Going back a bit, what happened to the paisley shirts?
I had stopped wearing them but in my house I had a spare room in which there was a mountain of paisley shirts on the floor. I came home from tour one day and my then girlfriend, who was Swedish and a bit of a bossy boots, had thrown them all away. She said, “You did not need them any more, so I got rid of them”, and that was it. They were worth a fortune.
The Church play Auckland Town Hall on Tuesday, December 4.