Cover Story: The Church
Sometimes, great art can become something like a snowball as it tumbles downhill after its initial creation, colliding with â then absorbing â many other diverse mediums, expressions, and even creators themselves as it goes. Take, for example, Australian author Jane Harperâs riveting mystery novel from 2016, The Dry. It lures you in from the first page and wonât let go until itâs wended its serpentine, violence-spattered way to a surprising, genuinely satisfying conclusion, as federal agent Aaron Falk receives a note from the father of his former childhood friend Luke Hadler, who has allegedly just killed his wife, son, then himself in the small drought-ravaged town of Kiewarra. The ominous message reads, âLuke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral.â Falk has no choice but to reluctantly return home from his police job in Melbourne to a place heâd hastily departed two decades earlier under a cloud of suspicion involving the unsolved drowning death of his then-teenage girlfriend, Ellie. And sure enough, the resentful old-wounds fireworks kick off the moment he arrives.
On its own, Harperâs book is a great one. But â given the colorful characters and conversely bleak backdrop sheâd sketched â naturally, The Dry was destined to go much further. And, oddly enough, as it kept rolling, it even grew to include Aussie artist Steve Kilbey and his band The Church, who â bandleader Steve Kilbey was surprised to learn â had made an impact on the mythical hamlet of Kiewarra, as well. In Robert Connollyâs razor-sharp 2020 film adaptation of the bestselling novel, starring Down Under legend Eric Bana as Falk, The Churchâs breakthrough 1988 smash âUnder the Milky Way Tonightâ is featured not once, but twice, and feels almost synonymous with the stark Outback landscape Falk must navigate as he unearths one false lead after another to eventually solves both crimes, old and new, almost simultaneously. First, the song is crooned a cappella by campfire light by Ellie in two-decades-old flashbacks, and she explains its importance to her afterward with, âMy mom used to sing it to me, over and over and over .â Later, the actress, 26-year-old Bebe Bettencourt, daughter of rock royalty, Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt and Baby Animals front woman Suze DeMarchi, presides over an even more elegiac piano version of âMilky Wayâ during the closing credits, and its dreamy, almost otherworldly wispiness somehow manages to summarize the picture perfectly. Harper herself even has a cameo as one of the Hadlermourners.
And, of course, Kilbey isnât resting on his glory days laurels at a seasoned, still-cynical 68. The Church has a brand-new concept album out, The Hypnogogue, its 26th, and it gleams with potential hits every bit as chiming and charming as that Dry â reinvigorated definitive early work, like the galloping âCâest la Vieâ which considers the possibility of becoming irrelevant (as the recordâs protagonist does) with âWatch out tiger/ Youâre on the skids. Falling out of favor/ With the kids,â the sleighbell-toned jangler âI Think I Knew,â a jittery âThe Coming Days,â and an arena-huge anthem called âNo Other Youâ that recalls vintage early-â80s classics like âThe Unguarded Moment.â Buttressed by the newly invigorated triple-guitar threat of Jeffery Cain, Ashley Naylor, and ex-Powderfinger stylist Ian Haug. In the end, it’s Kilbeyâs ethereal pneumatic warble and â by his own faux-journo-speak definition in the lyrics â âreptilian bassâ: that hold sway, especially as the melodies get more psychedelic and prog-rock intricate on âAntarctica,â âAscendance,â and the six-minute epic âSucculent.â Although the albumâs theme seems a bit MK ULTRA-creepy â a washed-up singer/songwriter consults a ceramic-masked mystery woman who, through apparent covert hypnosis, sucks song ideas out of his head, possibly the last bastion of his personal privacy â Kilbey convincingly sells it, even though heâs not sure how this twisted predator vs. prey parable ends. And just what, exactly, would constitute an actual victory? The aim of the notorious Sidney Gottlieb-helmed CIA MK ULTRA experiments from the â50s, â60s, and â70s was to completely, albeit subliminally, alter an individualâs personality and behavior without their knowledge or permission, and they came uncomfortably close.
So Steve Kilbey doesnât necessarily need to fall back on past successes like âUnder the Milky Way.â Heâs just as relevant today as heâs ever been. But happy to take a bow for it, 35 years later, from his home in Sydney. When he first penned the number with then girlfriend Karin Jansson back then, neither he nor the band thought much of it, he recalls. It was one more cut for the L.A.-recorded ( and best-selling)Â Starfish album. But when their Arista Records honcho Clive Davis heard it, he instantly proclaimed it a hit, and Davis was rarely wrong. Its ensuing worldwide success didnât sit well with Kilbey, who was growing tired of major-label machinations; When the song took Single of the Year honors at the 1989 ARIAs, he refused to attend and claim his trophy and commented, âI donât give a fuck about winning that award.â Heâs changed his tune now that itâs become a revered Australian standard, covered by countless artists over the years, including Bettencourtâs take on piano, the original instrument he wrote it on before transposing it to guitar. And the licensed usages of âMilky Wayâ just keep coming. âThere was a Ford commercial, and twice itâs been used as a tourist thing, a song to get visitors to go to the Australian capital territory, where Canberra is,â Kilbey says. Itâs just all over the place, and it was a piano song before it was a guitar song, so it can be either, and I think it sounds good either way.â
The story didnât end with the film credits. When The Dry had its Down Under premiere at an open-air theatre, Kilbey was invited to get up on stage to sing âUnder the Milky Wayâ before the movie ran â a nice touch, underscoring the trackâs enduring appeal and importance. The singer was even given a front-row seat alongside the Bana-to-Bettencourt cast. And then? âHowâs this for irony?â Kilbey chuckles. âIt rained! And they gave everybody raincoats and ponchos, but I couldnât leave because I had my guitar and everyone in the cinema, two hundred to three hundred people, would see me. So I had to sit there, getting rained on, and watch a movie called The Dry. I was obliged to.â
Still, nice work if you can still get it after a four-decade career in show business. He rationalized all of it in the following good-spirited, Which complements our mid-pandemic, more climate-change-themed chatâŚ.
IE: Jane Harperâs book The Dry is set in the fictional Australian town of Kiewarra thatâs been plagued by drought. But the film really hammers it home, with shots of grain silos all marked âContaminated,â clearly showing how weather can destroy an entire areaâs economy. Climate change was definitely coming.
STEVE KILBEY: Climate change is here. But I think Australia has always had âdrysâ since I can remember. Before climate change, there have been drys, and I remember as a kid going to places in the country with my parents where it hadnât rained for five years, you know? So Australia has always had that, those drys, definitely.
IE: The last time we talked, Donât Look Up had just come out, but you hadnât seen it yet. That was a real zeitgeist-capturing moment, I thought.
SK: Yes, and I did see that movie, and itâs true â that was a zeitgeist thing! What an incredible film that was, and itâs funny â within a couple of weeks, everybody I knew was saying, âYouâve gotta see this film!â And now? No oneâs talking about it anymore.
IE: Whatâs this hyperbaric oxygen tank youâve been talking about?
SK: Look, my girlfriend joined me to a gym, and itâs that thing where they have all these hot and cold pools and infrared saunas and weightless float tanks and stuff. And that was one of âem, that was one of the things you could try. So I tried it, and I didnât notice anything, good or bad. So thatâs the end of that. But apparently, if you really need it, itâs really good for you, I hear. Itâs good if you have bone injuries and skin grafts and stuff, but I didnât have any real reason to be in there, so I didnât notice any benefits, Iâve got to admit. It was just like, I sat in there for an hour, wishing it would end.
IE: These days, I wouldnât mind owning a sensory deprivation tank, like they had in old sci-fi flicks.
SK: You know what? Iâve done plenty of that. My brother worked in a flotation tank center back in the â80s, and they used to have hundreds of those things. And sometimes, it just felt like you were lying in a hot salty bath, wishing it was over. And other times, youâd have really profound astral happenings, you know? You could never tell what was gonna happen, but I have quite a lot of experience with the float tank. Theyâve got one of those at this place I joined, but itâs a dry one, so donât have to lie in water â itâs like the water is in there, but thereâs like a skin, and you lie on top of the skin, and you donât have to get wet. I havenât tried that yet, but of course, as soon as I tried to book into that, they said, âOh, thatâs busted now.â But it sounds good in theory because I always found that when youâre in those flotation tanks, just when youâre in the farthest reaches of the cosmos, experiencing some incredible enlightening event, a drop of cold water would condense on the roof, then drop on your face and wake you up. So they havenât quite got it right yet.
IE: In the â50s, â60s, and â70s, the CIA was conducting these creepy MK ULTRA experiments, trying to covertly alter human behavior. It sounds like your Hypnogogue concept could easily have been a part of that. Where and how did you come up with this idea?
SK: The Hypnogogue in my story is a machine and a place, and itâs also an event. Itâs sort of likeâŚitâs an indefinable thing. Itâs ambiguous because I donât know exactly what it is. So it isnât just confined to a machine or a place or a building, and thereâs a sort of occult aspect â itâs a machine, but thereâs a drug and occult side to it. Itâs a really dangerous dabbling in something that nobody understands in my story. This woman has invented it, and our hero goes along to try it out against his managerâs advice. And he tries out The Hypnogogue to write some great songs to have some hit singles, and there are some disastrous consequences. But thereâs a lot of ambiguity again â Iâm leaving a lot of it up to the listenerâs imagination. Iâm not even sure how the machine works, and Iâm not sure what the disastrous consequences are. I donât wanna tell people too much of what it is â I just want them to enjoy it and flesh it out as much as they want. Or not at all. One person may flesh it out and really get the story together of what they think happens, and someone else might go, âFuck all that â I donât wanna do all that. I just want to enjoy this record.â And you can do any of those things.
IE: But it sounds like the Heroâs decision is made for him without his permission. But he goes along with it in the name of art?
SK: Iâve never thought of that. But I like that. I never thought that he would be forced to do it â Iâm more like, This guy has been a pop star, and the hits have dried up, and he hears about somebody on the other side of the world whoâs invented a machine that can drag art straight out of peopleâs heads, so you donât have to bother with all that stuff. You donât have to bother writing it â you can just pull it straight out. And thereâs a song called âCâest La Vie,â where his manager is saying all this to him, like, âI wouldnât do that if I were you.â But he goes along and uses it against his managerâs advice.
IE: Love that song. âWatch out, tiger/ Youâre on the skids/ Falling out of favor/ With the kids.âÂ
SK: The kids! Thatâs right. I was also trying to have the voice of a manager, like what a manager might say to an artist who heâs battling with. Thereâs a lot of that. âWhat if I told you it was you?â You, youâre the reason it isnât working out for yourself â itâs because of you, itâs not anything else, so donât try and go find it in a machine. But the whole thing came together, bit by bit â I didnât say to the guys, âWeâre gonna make an album called **The Hypnogogue, and itâs gonna be about this.â It was like, âOh, weâre starting to make an album, and some of the lyrics are coming together, and some musicâs coming together.â And gradually, itâs dawning on me that this could be a great concept album. And then we wrote this song, âNo Other You,â and we wrote the music, but as Iâm singing it, the first thing I wanna sing is âSun Kim Jong as a woman’s name, a Korean womanâs name. And I have no idea why I wanna sing that, and the other guys are going, âWhat are you singing? âSunken Junk?â And I said, âNo, I want to sing Sun Kim Jung, like this personâs name, so there must be a reason why. And I wanna change it to something else, but I sort of feel like Iâm stuck with that because thatâs what the song should be.â And then more songs came along, and Jeffrey (Cain, guitarist) came up with the music for the song âThe Hypnogogue,â and then all the lyrics started coming out. And when it was all over, I sat back and looked at what Iâve got, and I thought, âItâs a fucking concept album about this thing called The HYpnogogue, and Sun Kim Jong is the woman who invents it, and the guy whoâs going there, heâs the protagonist of the story. Heâs a futuristic pop star, he lives in 2054, which is a hundred years after I was born, and heâs dried up, and he goes across the world to use The Hypnogogue, falls in love with Sun Kim Jong. And it all goes wrong, the machine blows up, the songs are toxic, and when itâs all over, heâs sore and sorry. Itâs just entertainment.
IE: This is your 26th album, and you still sound as musically inspired and altogether relevant as you ever did. Were there times when you feared that it would go away?Â
SK: My creativity? No. I never worry about my creativity â I worry if people will be receptive to it. Sometimes I feel incredibly out of favor; I feel incredibly out of fashion. I feel that nobodyâs listening anymore, and whatever it was that I had to offer isnât kind of what people want anymore. But I never doubt the actual stuff itself â I just doubt where I am in the scheme of things at any point in time. You know, it wouldnât surprise me if the album just comes out and disappears, and nobody ever takes any notice of it.
IE: Well, everythingâs for sale now, from Hypnogogue hits to your algorithm-calibrated attention span. How do we fight to maintain our humanity?
SK: I donât know. I donât know and I, myself, am pretty close to giving up. And in many ways, Iâm glad that my tenure on this Earth is almost up because I donât like the way things are going at all. But I canât figure out if the times really are bad or if all old people feel like this.
IE: But how are your twin daughters (Elektra and Miranda)? Are they still making music (as Say Lou Lou)?
SK: Yeah. Say Lou Lou are on the verge of releasing a new single called âWaiting For a Boy,â and Elektra was on a TV show called Shantaram that was on Apple TV, and now sheâs getting in another one, so sheâs doing a lot of acting. But yeah, theyâre definitely still making music.
IE: Because as a parent, you definitely have to hope for your kids that everything will turn out alright in the world.Â
SK: I do. I have five daughters, and my very youngest daughter? I gave her her first guitar lesson the other day. And it went pretty well â I didnât lose my temper. Afterward, she said she really enjoyed it, and she thought it was good that I didnât lose my temper. Because I had tried to give some bass lessons to her older sister, and apparently, I lost my temper, and she went, âFuck that! I donât want to learn now!â You know like when youâre trying to teach them to drive a car? You lose your temper, and they go, âOh, I donât wanna learn now.â So obviously, the worst way to try and learn something is if your teacher loses their temper. So I wish all my kids could be following along in music, but I would be really happy if any of them or just some of them go on and make some music. Nothing would make me happier than that, for sure.
IE: And the point of our âUnder the Milky Wayâ discussion, by the way, is just the intrinsic staying power of a great song. Youâre going to live forever through just that alone. Youâre automatically eternal.
SK: But it just wonât feel like that when Iâm actually dead. But yes, I know what youâre saying. I will live on through that song. I remember something Woody Allen said â âSome people try and achieve immortality by creating a piece of art that lasts forever. But Iâm trying to achieve immortality by not dying.â I go along with that one more. But yeah, it would be nice to achieve immortality with a nice song. But the, uhh, rewards of it are kind of nebulous. But because Iâm a believer in reincarnation, I always imagined being John Lennon, who reincarnated sometime, maybe in the â90s or the 2000s. And I guess Mozart or Beethoven could reincarnate, but when they encounter their own music, it would be hard. But imagine Lennon dying, then he reincarnates, and one day he encounters The Beatles playing somewhere. One really wonders what it would do to that guy. In fact, thatâs almost a little story in itself, donât you think?
IE: Itâs amazing you even came to play music, the way youâve described your family dynamic as a kid. Your dad was a keyboardist who treasured music, and your mom actually hated it. There was constant bickering, and youâre the end result.
SK: I am. I am. The result of two opposites.
IE: What conclusions have you come to at this point?
SK: Well, I canât do anything about this life. But I hope, and not just with decisions I made about music and stuff, but one hopes when one is reincarnated back into this world, that next time Iâm tempted to do some of the things I did in this life, a little voice inside of me goes, âDidnât you learn from that last time? What happens if youâre rude or arrogant, or hubristic? Or if you underestimate people? I hope that I can remember the lessons that Iâm supposed to learn. I think we come to Earth and elsewhere â this is just one destination â but we come to Earth over and over and over to learn until we can qualify to move on to whateverâs next. So you keep moving up the scale, down the scale or staying the same, according to what happens. But when you become an Enlightened Master, you donât have to come back here anymore â you can go on to whateverâs next, being unified with the Universe or some other glorious thing. But if you fuck up every time, you have to keep coming back and learning your lesson. I think this stuff is absolutely fascinating.
IE: But arenât there some defiant days when you want to address any skeptic or naysayers with â to paraphrase Woody Allen again, and that awesome Marshall McLuhan line â âI am Steve Kilbey! And you know nothing of my work!â
SK: Ha! You know, I just might use that one! But I donât worry so much about people arguing. I worry more about just being ignored. I think people even noticing what you do and then saying something negative about it is better than being completely ignored. I think thatâs my greatest fear â not so much being misunderstood, but just having even been interested enough to try and interpret it. But I will say that! âIâm Steve Kilbey! And you know nothing of my work!â
Appearing 3/26 at Thalia Hall, Chicago.
-Tom Lanham
Category: Cover Story, Featured