The Church (band)

Based on Wikipedia: The Church (band)

In 1988, an Australian band that had been dropped by two American record labels, lost thousands of dollars on a disastrous U.S. tour, and watched their members quit mid-show finally broke through with a song their frontman would later admit was "not really about anything at all." The song was "Under the Milky Way," and it remains one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of guitar pop ever recorded. But the story of The Church—a band that has somehow survived for over four decades despite almost comically bad luck with record labels—is far stranger than their one big hit suggests.

Liverpool Meets Canberra

Steve Kilbey and Peter Koppes first played together in a band called Baby Grande in Canberra during the mid-1970s. Australia's capital city isn't known as a hotbed of rock innovation—it's a planned city full of government buildings and roundabouts—but something clicked between the bass player and guitarist. They drifted apart, each joining other bands. Kilbey played with Tactics, an art-punk outfit. Koppes joined Limazine. The usual musician's journey through the Sydney scene.

They reconnected in Sydney in March 1980 and formed a three-piece with Limazine's drummer Nick Ward. Kilbey proposed calling the band "The Church of Man," but they shortened it. A month later, a young guitarist from Liverpool, England named Marty Willson-Piper watched one of their gigs and introduced himself to Kilbey afterward.

That same night, Willson-Piper was invited to join.

This established what would become The Church's signature sound: two interlocking guitars weaving around each other, creating what the Los Angeles Times would later describe as "dense, shimmering, exquisite guitar pop." The Byrds had pioneered jangly twelve-string guitar rock in the 1960s, but The Church took that foundation and draped it in reverb and mystery, creating something that felt like driving through fog at night.

The Rickenbacker and the Tape Delay

A four-song demo recorded in Kilbey's bedroom caught the attention of Chris Gilbey, managing director of ATV Northern Songs. Gilbey didn't just sign the band—he actively shaped their sound. He bought Willson-Piper a twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar, the same model that had defined the Byrds' chiming sound two decades earlier. He equipped Koppes with an Echolette tape delay, a German-made effects unit that added ethereal repetitions to his guitar lines.

These weren't arbitrary choices. The Rickenbacker twelve-string produces a sound often described as "jangly"—the strings are arranged in pairs, with each pair tuned to the same note (or an octave apart), creating a natural chorus effect when strummed. The tape delay, meanwhile, takes a guitar signal, records it to tape, and plays it back a fraction of a second later, creating ghostly echoes. Together, these tools would become fundamental to The Church's sonic identity.

Their debut album, Of Skins and Heart, was recorded late in 1980 and mixed by Bob Clearmountain, an American engineer who would later become legendary for his work with Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams, and the Rolling Stones. The album's second single, "The Unguarded Moment," became a top forty hit in Australia, reaching number twenty-two.

At the start of 1981, just as success beckoned, drummer Nick Ward was replaced by Richard Ploog, a player recruited from Adelaide based purely on his reputation. Ploog would remain behind the kit for the rest of the decade, though his tenure would end under difficult circumstances.

The Capitol Disaster

Commercial success in Australia attracted attention from international labels. French label Carrere and American label Capitol both released the debut album in 1982, retitling it simply The Church. The album performed well overseas, reaching number seven in New Zealand and number thirteen in Sweden.

The band's second album, The Blurred Crusade, pushed their sound further into atmospheric territory. One contemporary reviewer noted that "with its mystical lyrics the second album brought the group's own style more into focus." It peaked at number ten in Australia, and its single "Almost with You" became another top thirty hit.

Then Capitol made a request that would torpedo The Church's American momentum for years.

The label demanded they write more radio-friendly material. As an example of what they meant, Capitol pointed to their other Australian signing: Little River Band, purveyors of smooth, inoffensive soft rock hits like "Reminiscing" and "Cool Change."

The Church was horrified.

They recorded five new songs and submitted them. Capitol remained unimpressed and dropped the band without releasing The Blurred Crusade in North America. Those five songs eventually came out in Australia as an EP called Sing-Songs—and somewhat ironically, it became one of the bestselling Canadian imports of 1983. American fans wanted the album; they just couldn't get it through official channels.

Meanwhile, The Church's manager arranged what should have been a career-making opportunity: a U.K. tour opening for Duran Duran, then one of the biggest pop acts in the world. After eight shows, The Church quit. The audiences, there to see pretty boys in makeup sing about hungry wolves, had no patience for Australian art rock.

Their manager later reflected: "They were hard work. All four of them were strong-willed and had their own ideas of how things should be."

The Machine Gun Drums

The band's third album, Seance, arrived in May 1983. It featured more keyboards and synthesizers than previous releases, and songs that explored what one critic called "the band's darker side." The tracks were described as "awash with strings and other effects."

But the album's sound was partly an accident—and not a happy one.

Mixing engineer Nick Launay, who had worked with Midnight Oil, favored a production technique called gated reverb on the drums. This effect, hugely popular in 1980s rock production, works by applying reverb to the drum sound and then using a "gate"—an electronic device that cuts the signal when it drops below a certain volume. The result is a punchy, almost artificial drum sound where the reverb stops abruptly rather than naturally fading out.

On Seance, this produced what one reviewer likened to a "machine gun" snare sound. The band asked Launay to redo the mix. He complied, but the effect was only slightly reduced. The first single, "Electric Lash," featured the gated drums especially prominently.

Despite their dissatisfaction with the production, the album stayed on the British independent charts for months. The American press was enthusiastic—Creem magazine declared The Church "one of the best in the world"—but sales remained poor.

Drifting in a Sea of Apathy

By the mid-1980s, the band sensed their creative momentum slipping away. Unable to match the commercial success of their first two albums, they began to lose faith in their own work.

Kilbey later admitted: "I think we released a few dud records that weren't as good as they should have been, after The Blurred Crusade. The band was just drifting along in a sea of apathy. I was writing not-so-good songs and the band wasn't playing them very well, so everyone's enthusiasm just waned."

This is a remarkably candid assessment from a working musician. Most artists, when discussing fallow periods, blame external factors—labels, managers, the public's bad taste. Kilbey blamed himself and his bandmates.

Early 1985 found the band members scattered across three continents: Stockholm, Sydney, and Jamaica. Kilbey released a solo single, "This Asphalt Eden," and produced a track for the Crystal Set, a band that included his brother Russell.

When The Church reconvened at Studios 301 in Sydney later that year, they brought in British producer Peter Walsh, who had worked with Simple Minds, Scott Walker, and Peter Gabriel. The resulting album, Heyday, added real strings and horns to their guitar-driven sound, creating something warmer and more orchestral than anything they'd attempted before.

More significantly, the band began writing the music together. Previously, Kilbey had dominated the songwriting. Now, though he still handled lyrics, the instrumentalists collaborated on the music. This would become their standard practice going forward.

The Starfish Breakthrough

Everything changed in 1988.

After signing with Arista Records in the U.S. and Mushroom Records in Australia, the band traveled to Los Angeles to record with producers Waddy Wachtel and Greg Ladanyi. Wachtel had worked with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones; Ladanyi had produced Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, and Fleetwood Mac.

The sessions represented a culture clash. Kilbey later described it as "Australian hippies versus West Coast guys who know the way they like to do things. We were a bit more undisciplined than they would have liked."

The producers pushed Kilbey to take vocal lessons. He resisted initially but later admitted the experience was valuable.

The album they created, Starfish, became The Church's commercial peak. It reached number eleven in Australia and cracked the top fifty in America. The Recording Industry Association of America certified it gold in December 1992.

But it was one song that transformed their career.

"Under the Milky Way" was written by Kilbey and his then-girlfriend Karin Jansson, a Swedish musician who had played in a band called Pink Champagne. The song reached number twenty-four on the American Billboard Hot 100—their only top forty hit in the States—and climbed to number two on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.

In 2008, readers of The Australian newspaper voted it the best Australian song of the previous twenty years.

Kilbey's response to this honor was characteristically self-deprecating: "It's not really about anything at all. I just wanted to create an atmosphere and I didn't even put a lot of thought into that. History has given it something that it never really had."

The Song About Nothing

What makes "Under the Milky Way" so enduring? The lyrics are deliberately opaque—Kilbey sings about wishing he had a river to skate away on, about something quite peculiar, about lowering the curtain down. None of it means anything specific.

But the atmosphere is unmistakable. The song opens with a simple acoustic guitar pattern, then adds Koppes's electric guitar playing a melancholic countermelody through his signature delay. A bagpipe—or rather, a synthesizer imitating a bagpipe—enters during the chorus, adding an unexpected Celtic mournfulness.

The production is spacious. There's room to breathe between the instruments. When Kilbey sings, his voice floats in reverb, making the lyrics feel like half-remembered dreams.

Perhaps that's why the song resonates. It captures a feeling—of late nights, of uncertainty, of beauty that can't quite be grasped—without pinning it down with specific meaning. Listeners project their own experiences onto it.

The Long Aftermath

After Starfish, Arista naturally wanted another hit. The Church returned to Los Angeles with Waddy Wachtel producing, under pressure to duplicate their success.

But mainstream success proved elusive after that. Their subsequent albums—Gold Afternoon Fix, Priest = Aura, Sometime Anywhere—earned critical respect without matching Starfish's commercial performance. The band became something rarer than a hit act: a cult phenomenon with a devoted international following.

The lineup evolved. Drummer Richard Ploog, whose playing had defined their sound through the 1980s, departed in 1990. Jay Dee Daugherty, who had played with the Patti Smith Group, took over for a few years before Tim Powles joined in the mid-1990s. Powles remains with the band to this day.

Koppes left from 1992 to 1997, then returned, then left again in 2020. Willson-Piper departed in 2013. Ian Haug, formerly of the Australian rock band Powderfinger, replaced him. The band absorbed new members while maintaining their core identity, like a ship replacing planks one by one while remaining the same vessel.

The Hall of Fame and Beyond

In 2010, The Church was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame—Australia's equivalent of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. By then, they had spent three decades making music largely ignored by mainstream audiences but cherished by those who discovered them.

They continue to record and tour. Their twenty-sixth studio album, The Hypnogogue, arrived in February 2023. Their twenty-seventh, Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars, followed in March 2024.

Twenty-seven studio albums. More than forty years as a band. Through label disputes, lineup changes, tours that lost money, and a culture that largely moved on to other sounds.

Glenn A. Baker, an Australian music historian, once wrote that "from the release of the 'She Never Said' single in November 1980, this unique Sydney-originated entity has purveyed a distinctive, ethereal, psychedelic-tinged sound which has alternatively found favour and disfavour in Australia."

That's perhaps the most honest assessment of their career. They found favour. They found disfavour. They kept playing anyway.

What They Sound Like

For readers unfamiliar with The Church, their sound deserves some context. They emerged from the new wave movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s—a broad category that included everything from Talking Heads' nervous art-funk to Duran Duran's glamorous synth-pop. Within that landscape, The Church occupied the dreamy, guitar-driven corner that would later be called "dream pop."

Dream pop is exactly what it sounds like: pop music that feels like dreaming. Vocals are often washed in reverb, making them feel distant. Guitars layer on top of each other, creating shimmering walls of sound rather than sharp riffs. The tempos tend toward mid-pace or slow. The lyrics are frequently abstract or impressionistic.

The Church didn't invent this approach—you can hear its roots in the Velvet Underground, in shoegaze pioneers like Cocteau Twins, in the more atmospheric moments of U2. But they developed their own particular version: two guitars interweaving, bass that was melodic rather than merely rhythmic, drums that served the song's atmosphere rather than driving it forward.

Their later work has been compared to post-rock, a genre that emerged in the 1990s and featured bands like Mogwai and Sigur Rós creating long, slowly building instrumental pieces. The Church never became instrumental, but their songs did grow longer and more patient, content to establish a mood and live in it.

The Unlikely Survivors

Most bands don't last forty years. Most bands don't survive being dropped by their American label before their second album could be released. Most bands don't survive losing money on tour after tour. Most bands don't survive members quitting mid-show in foreign countries.

The Church survived all of it.

Perhaps that's because they never depended on mainstream success for their identity. After their initial hits in Australia, after the Capitol debacle, after the Duran Duran tour disaster, they settled into a different kind of career. They made the music they wanted to make. They found audiences who wanted to hear it. They kept going.

In an industry built on hits and trends, they became something more durable: a band that exists because its members want to make music together, and because enough listeners want to hear what they create.

That's not nothing. In fact, it might be everything.