Live Review: The Church at Park West • Chicago
The Church, 2026
Park West
Chicago, IL
July 7, 2026
Review by Jeff Elbel
Led by founding member Steve Kilbey, Australian rockers the Church filled Park West with dreamy psychedelia, inventive alternative pop, and searing rock on Tuesday. “When I was young and getting started, the man opened the big book of rules and said there’s no rock and roll on Monday or Tuesday,” said Kilbey. “Here we all are proving that wrong.”
The band’s summer Singles tour in North America emphasized popular songs and fan favorites. With the new album Lacuna, speculated to be released later this year via Cooking Vinyl, there were also a couple of glimpses into the future.
The show opened with the chiming “Columbus” from the 1985 album Heyday and then zoomed back and forth through the intervening decades. The set touched on 14 of the prolific band’s 28 albums.
The oldest songs, “Tear It All Away” and homeland signature song “The Unguarded Moment,” were drawn from the 1981 full-length debut Of Skins and Heart. Kilbey spiced the show with good humor and anecdotes. “Tear It All Away” was allegedly created under the influence of psychedelic drugs that enabled telepathic communication with his Persian housecat Casper, who assured the singer that people in 2026 would be very interested in hearing it.
Kilbey said that miming “The Unguarded Moment” on Australian television made the Church into overnight pop stars, with a nationwide audience that was hostile to every other song in the band’s repertoire. “It didn’t make any sense to me, because all of the songs sounded the same,” he deadpanned. “Sing the harmonies at the end, and you’ll feel like real Aussies,” Kilbey promised. The crowd happily obliged.
Other favorites, including the beatific MTV-era hit “Metropolis,” peppered the band’s first set. “Do you like the singles?” asked Kilbey, to enthusiastic cheers. “Well, how superficial you all are,” he joked. The audience eagerly accepted the surreal jangle of “Electric Lash” from the 1983 album Séance.
Recent material also earned an enthusiastic response. The title track from 2023 sci-fi psychodrama The Hypnogogue was sandwiched between the songs from Of Skins and Heart. Kilbey explained the album’s backstory about a washed-up songwriter who succumbs to the temptation of a machine with the ability to pull songs from a person’s soul at tremendous personal cost. Kilbey said that the protagonist’s soul-song found wild success, achieving “50 billion streams per second.” “And he gets a check for $2.15,” he said, delivering the punch line.
The song featured the guitars of former Powderfinger guitarist Ian Haug and Even veteran Ashley Naylor, who wove curlicue arpeggios, sinewy e-bow lines, spacious echoes and stirring solos throughout their intertwining arrangements.
Percussionist Tim Powles added bristling vocal counterpoint to the brooding and Dylanesque tone poem “Block.” The song from the Church’s 20th album, Uninvited, Like the Clouds, coincidentally marks its 20th anniversary this year.
Read our July 2026 Cover Story with The Church
Kilbey described a roadblock to the Church’s momentum as it attempted to bring the Séance album to the world in 1983. “It’s like ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ on bad acid,” said Kilbey, quoting an unsympathetic critic. One record executive allegedly deemed the album to be too depressing for American youth. “A tubercular poet reaching through the veil of death to his deceased fiancée,” said Kilbey. “What’s so depressing about that?” The band gave gothic pop fare by the early Cure a run for its money while performing “It’s No Reason.”
“Realm of Minor Angels” was performed from 2024’s Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars. The song was familiar to fans who heard it during prior appearances at Chicago’s Vic Theatre and SPACE in Evanston. Haug’s mandolin decorated the intoxicating midtempo track while Kilbey sang its languid melody. Afterward, Kilbey basked in the ovation. “These guys charge so much,” he said, gesturing to his bandmates. “All I live on is the applause.”
“I have a riddle for you,” said Kilbey, setting up the evening’s dad joke. “Why is a snake like a poet? They’re both Longfellows.” The band duly completed the first set with the wicked “Reptile.” Haug and Naylor meshed suitably serpentine guitar lines reminiscent of those introduced on 1988’s Starfish album by the band’s vintage lineup.
The second set erupted with the two opening tracks of their 1982 sophomore album The Blurred Crusade. The shimmering “Almost with You” was propelled by drummer Nicholas Meredith’s resolute and urgent beat. The band careened through a delirious “When You Were Mine” before traveling forward in time.
The band settled into the heady “Ripple” from 1992’s Priest=Aura, including a heavily treated percussion solo by Powles. Thrumming chords introduced the stormy Starfish favorite “Destination.”
The crowd was treated to its first glimpse of the forthcoming Lacuna album via the intoxicating “Western.” The song’s atmospheric post-punk flourishes rode atop a sonic bed that suggested Native American tonality and rhythm.
The Church at Park West in Chicago, July 7, 2026 (photo by Jeff Elbel)
The influence of The Byrds was evident in “Already Yesterday,” replete with vocal harmony and jangling arpeggios. Next came the tuneful and turbulent “Numbers” from the 2002 underdog gem After Everything Now This. These songs raised the energy in the room for the glistening and breathtaking “Under the Milky Way.” Tour manager and auxiliary musician Matt Wicks played 12-string acoustic guitar in tandem with Haug as the audience sang along.
After hearing the band’s best-known single, a handful of people were seen making surreptitious attempts to beat the crowd to the exits. Kilbey admonished them as Philistines while Naylor played the band Chicago’s 1976 soft-rock plea, “If You Leave Me Now.” Fans took Naylor’s direction to sing the melodramatic line, “Oo-oo-ooh, no, baby, please don’t go.”
Those who remained in the room were praised as true music lovers and were offered a dazzling and cathartic performance of the slashing “Tantalized” to conclude the main set. The song stretched to 11 minutes of sonic force and included another showcase for Powles’ dynamic musicality.
The band returned for an encore with the meditative and disquieted new song “Sacred Echoes (Part Two)” from Lacuna, followed by the charming and energizing classic “An Interlude” to wrap the evening. The encore underscored the performance’s running demonstration of how well The Church’s newer material holds up against the better-known material from its heyday on college radio and MTV. With luck, disciples in Chicago won’t have long to wait for the band’s return with a set list featuring a deeper dive into Lacuna and other new hymns.
Category: Featured, Live Reviews
