All the Things you Could See in a Girl’s Eyes

If only I could write an opening sentence in the way Steve Kilbey can, for this little text that features their 2017 album “Man Woman Life Death Infinity” (should I come up with one later on, I’ll just add it at the beginning). Yes, wordy beginnings should never be of the hesitant or faltering kind, words always take shape in the midst of something else, while we’re in the thick of things, we are always already in the middle of a story, nothing’s ever truly new. No other band has ever given me this crystal clear intuition of a never ending creative process as The Church have. I think Steve never really started writing or composing music, nor will he ever stop, music just seems to coincide with his person. And you can hear that: it’s ever fresh and full of the vitality of eternal renewal.

These words sound perhaps somewhat exaggerated or artificial, but the nature of their music is of a very peculiar kind indeed. I chose and singled out this album just because I love it so much, right from the start when I first played it, I felt good in its swaying gentleness. And also, this album – being the latest in a long long row of twins and siblings, with different, but always loving families arising – sums up so nicely what The Church have always been about, so it seems right from the beginning. To me the soul of The Church’s music has never really changed, that same energetic and rounded life soul of the early days is still present in all of their work, even or perhaps even more in their more recent output. I would like to compare their work to the cycles in nature, the bewilderment of tempests and the heaviness of sun-laden days, but the balance always returns; it is its soft state of equilibrium, of poise and counterpoise, that I adore so much. Their music and lyrics are a near perfect balancing act, where every extremity can find its proper place, only to be united again with its counterpart, to be balanced out again. I’ll try to explain myself.

I once wrote that I am not a guitar girl, and it’s true, I wasn’t. I have a weakness for anything percussive, from the steady piano to the wobbly triangle. But that was before I started listening to The Church and its celestial guitars. The pop or rock guitar can be anything from sentimental, nice, entrancing, spellbinding, over boring, to loud, brutal or aggressive. But I had never heard them so compassionate and empathic as in the hands of the fine guitar men of The Church. Amidst the ever searching and explorative lyrics of Steve Kilbey, the guitars are honest, little oracles of truth, guiding the words into a dimension of mystery in which human life, despite all its keenness to analyse itself, will nevertheless always remain, in a vastness of open possibilities and meanings which the guitars as perfect gentlemanlike escorts and custodians of so much beauty, so willingly and skilfully deliver with such finesse. The space of our inner selves explored in its tiniest, most hidden and secretive, intimate spheres.

I often miss the words in The Church’s instrumentals, the music seems to be waiting for Steve’s words to make it complete and you somehow feel that it was made to carry this human voice wandering around in a constant search fuelled by incomprehension and wonder. Not that the music doesn’t speak for itself, it does most eloquently, but the voice of Steve and the words he professes metaphorise so well the human bewilderment and man’s journeying path across the enigma of a world so well reconstructed by the sound of the instruments. The vocals make us empathise even more with the ‘condition humaine’ that is portrayed so well as a man’s voice trying to find some sense in a whirlwind of words, taken from all sorts of linguistic, semantic and semiotic paradigms, from all kinds of micro and macro stories, from different realties, era’s, all forms of associations the mind can conjure up. It’s as if Steve Kilbey was leaving the precision to the guitars, so the words can play freely in an inspired, well-studied, faked or true randomness of meanings or absurdities. The attentive and precise guitar play makes these words ring loud and clear in the inner spaces of our minds and hearts. The perfect interplay of precision and randomness is just out of this world. Together they are my favourite cocktail for toasting and tasting the inscrutable depths of this world and our unlikely, absurd place in it. “I gotta light a candle for you – So you can see yourself in the dark”, well, he couldn’t have said it any better, and it couldn’t sound any better… And then the kindness of the guitars and a thoughtful rhythm that we recognise, soothing and familiar, lending us hope and confidence. And something nice might come of it… Yes, that’s the miracle of a Church song, of so many of them, over and over again, repeating their faith in the power and transcendence of music to go a little further and deeper, wherever that might be… Such a tremendous comfort to have around! “And in the fading light I saw…”, indeed,… “Another Century”, such compassion, grace and understanding…

In the midst of all possible chaos, randomness and fickleness, music somehow intimates that there’s an inner logic to its sound that will for ever accompany the turmoil of the world.

So that’s why I picked this album, because it’s one of their wisest, most harmonious and sensitive, spiked with a most earnest je-m’en-foutisme, grave and light at the same time. And with their innate love for all kinds of evolving processes, – of nature and biology, of history -, and for untold stories of love and mythology, fabrications of philosophical or poetic aphorisms, we are never in danger of getting bored.

“For King Knife” is such a wonderful mix of seriousness and whimsicalities, of truths and frivolities. To me it evokes the steps of a stately dance at the court of life and history, with ceremonies of coronation, pomp and grandeur, while little squirrels and birds live their simple tree lives. It’s a reverence to mighty history, a bow to time, to the unparalleled mastery of the universe and our insignificance. There’s acceptance and respectfulness but at the same time mockery and ridicule, all evenly equilibrated, in The Church’s very becoming aesthetics of balance. There’s clearly a master of ceremony at work here, who keeps a close eye at all that’s going on, theirs is a musical theism, where the creator holds his creation on a tight rein. It’s a well-kept garden of Eden, where the apple is constantly shined, but carefully watched. It’s the only way things will for ever last…

And “Man Woman Life Death Infinity” has some of their most enchanting melodies even when something out there is wrong; listen to its beautiful hope, its comforting embrace. Or the tender unlocking of poetical sequences out of nowhere, Steve ’s almost angelic sounding prosody as a clairière (an open space where the light plays in all abundance) in a dense and dark forest: “Sing but seldom seen the sun of salvation – New moon of celebration in your sky”… such a sumptuous combination of lyrical and musical phrasing. Aaahs and ooohhs aplenty. Such cute words everywhere, such gorgeously nomadic, itinerant, vagabond music strolls all throughout this shiny, revelatory gem of an album.

I chose the song “I Don’t Know How I Don’t Know” for many a reason, perhaps most of all for its grandiose Kilbey overture, just a few simple words with the profundity of an elaborate prolegomenon (yes, I needed this long, beautiful Greek ancestral word to capture the feeling of this magnificent opening line…): “Voyage begins with a single sail”, added to the music it’s one of the most poignant moments in the whole of The Church’s repertoire… I get tears in my eyes just thinking about it. It just feels so absolutely grand, spot on and magistral, seizing the overwhelming nature of the human voyage of ongoing discovery, the ultimate Odyssey. It’s truly touching how much truth, drama and emotion he can instil in a few short, fleeting moments!

And for the admiring gaze in the eyes of the girl at 0’46’’, she could be me… (I love the video with the coloured lights fuming from the heroic guitars, the brilliant cool of Peter Koppes…)

Yes sure, they don’t know how, they don’t know why. But then, those who know they don’t know anything, are the wisest of them all, isn’t that right, Mr. Socrates? If this is not one of the greatest bands ever to have graced the stage of the universe, I don’t know why not … and I give up.

Joke Roelandt, July 2020