I've become addicted to Steve Kilbey's blog, The Time Being. This is a first for me, not being entirely sympathetic (or sympa-pathetic, as a typical Kilbey pun might have it) with technology and electronic media. The recent Church biography (they come on paper between two sheets of cardboard) No Certainty Attached is usually more my speed than all this newfangled zeros and ones based stuff. For those joining us late, Steve Kilbey is the lead singer of seminal Australian band The Church. The Church were the first band I ever saw live and I suppose I've seen them four or five times over the years. Actually, the only band I've seen live more often is probably Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. The quality of those Church performances varied between ordinary and outstanding, perhaps mirroring the quality of their recorded output- although, in my opinion they're in the middle of a real purple patch at the moment. Their most recent, Untitled #23, is a cracking record.
I love every period of their music- I'm even, probably unreasonably, fond of the maligned Sometime Anywhere, on which Kilbey and, at the time, only other remaining member Marty Wilson Piper got electronic and experimental on our arses. There was, admittedly, a bit of an slump post Starfish, post fame in America, and into the early 90's- but the music they've made since then is some of the best of their career. Layered, mysterious, allusive. Kilbey's lyrics hint at places, characters and situations that remain, tantalisingly, vague and out of reach and the music follows. The songs seem to be set in altered realities, parallel worlds- all given substance by the conviction and seriousness of Kilbey's delivery, his caramel, sung/spoken vocals. I love that they've never become Heritage Rock, trawling around the RSL's endlessly pumping out uninspired versions of Under The Milky Way, The Unguarded Moment and Metropolis, as so easily might have happened.
All of that said, I don't rate the man's paintings...
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