The Church

About The Church

The Church emerged from Sydney in 1980, right when post-punk was fracturing into a dozen different directions. Steve Kilbey on bass and vocals, Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper on guitars, and Nick Ward on drums created something that split the difference between the Psychedelic Furs' moody atmospherics and the Byrds' jangle. They were Australian but never sounded particularly Australian, which probably helped them internationally and hurt them at home.

Their first few albums established the template: chiming guitars, Kilbey's detached baritone, lyrics that felt like half-remembered dreams. Of Skins and Heart and The Blurred Crusade built a small following, but it was 1981's "The Unguarded Moment" that got them noticed beyond Sydney's inner suburbs. That track had everything they'd spend the next four decades refining: the guitar interplay, the dreamlike imagery, the sense that you'd stumbled into the middle of someone else's memory.

Richard Ploog replaced Ward in 1981, and this lineup made their most vital work. Seance and Remote Luxury showed a band getting weirder and more confident, but it was 1988's Starfish that actually broke through. "Under the Milky Way" became their accidental hit, the kind of song that soundtracked a thousand late-night drives and never quite wore out. The album went gold in the US, which must have felt surreal for a band that had spent most of the decade playing to a few hundred people at a time.

Gold Afternoon Fix followed in 1990, then Priest=Aura in 1992. Both went top 25 in Australia, but by then grunge had shifted the conversation and jangly dreamscapes felt like artifacts from another era. Willson-Piper left in 2013 after three decades, which should have been a fatal blow but somehow wasn't. Ian Haug from Powderfinger stepped in, and the band kept going.

They've released thirty albums if you count everything, which is an absurd number that speaks to Kilbey's productivity and the band's refusal to stop. Most of the recent material lives in the same sonic territory they've always occupied, which at this point feels less like repetition and more like commitment to a specific vision. Some of it's great, some of it blends together, all of it sounds unmistakably like The Church.

They still tour regularly, still sound like themselves, still draw the faithful who've been following them since the Starfish days and younger listeners who discovered them through "Under the Milky Way" on some streaming playlist. Not many bands from 1980 are still operating with any credibility intact. The Church never became huge, never really chased it, and never stopped making the hazy, intricate guitar music they started with. That counts for something.

The Church live is contemplative and quietly intense. Crowds tend toward attentiveness rather than aggressive energy, watching closely as guitars interweave and the songs build slowly. People seem to appreciate the technical precision without needing constant climaxes.

Known for Under the Milky Way, Tangled in Red, The Unguarded Moment, Almost Good, Metropolis

See The Church Live