Live Review: The Church

They don’t fill stadiums, but venerable psychedelic pop band The Church command a fiercely devoted audience nonetheless - as evidence, note that their gig at the Rosie sold out some weeks prior, and that the main room was rammed with middle aged punters eager to soak of some of the old Kilbey magic. Some of them maybe hadn’t been to a gig in a while, such as the woman who insisted on tasting each wine on offer at the bar, oblivious to the rugby scrum of customers behind her trying to get their drinks in before kick off.

“We’re called The Church,” frontman Steve Kilbey needlessly informed the crowd. “And we’re gonna give you The Blurred Crusade.” before launching shakily into the first song of the night, Almost With You.

Musically, the band were as tight as ever, with recent recruit Ian Haug of Powderfinger fame slotting in neatly with The Church’s sonic aesthetic without going so far as to ape the distinctive style of departed guitarist Marty Wilson-Piper. Kilbey’s voice, however took a couple of songs to hit its stride; indeed, we were well into Fields Of Mars before the mystically-inclined singer seemed at home on the stage, relaxing into the vibe of the night. 

It was, to coin a sporting phrase, a game of two halves: first up, a run through The Blurred Crusade, The Church’s 1982 sophomore album, rightly regarded as an absolute classic, followed by a mix of cuts from their latest release, Further/Deeper, along with a selection of old favourites. 

It was clear that the crowd was mainly there for the old stuff, which is as disappointing as it is unsurprising - few bands manage to hook their fanbase as hard with their later explorations as they did with their early jam. Nonetheless, Vanishing Man, which opened the second set, is as good as anything they ever laid down back in the day, and Miami remains a sprawling and ambitious modern fantasy ballad.

Still, it was songs like Metropolis that really saw the crowd picking up what the band were putting down, and a fun cover of Powderfinger’s Waiting For The Sun was well received. The thesis is in the final scene, though, and the night wrapped up with a killer rendition of Reptile, taken from 1988’s Starfish, which got a bigger reaction than any three preceding songs put together. The Church remain a viable and inventive ongoing creative exercise, but its clear the fans like their old stuff better than their new stuff.