Church revival

Face it, you probably don’t know The Church. Without exposure to MTV and modern rock radio in 1988, you can be forgiven for overlooking the Australian psychedelic rock group.

Finding an entry point to their discography is daunting. The Church have released two dozen albums since 1980 and most Americans know nothing beyond 1988’s Starfish. As a casual fan, I don’t actually own any of the studio albums, just compilations from 1999 and 2010, respectively.

Are they undergoing a revival of sorts? They never went away. As with most bands I enjoy, they played the relatively small Mercy Lounge with a few hundred people on hand.

A mild shock that the group I never planned or desired to see would soon visit Nashville led me to buy tickets. I figured a band that endured nearly 35-plus years would put on a strong show. Nancy and I weren’t disappointed. Two of the four original band members – guitarist Peter Koppes and lead singer-bass guitarist Steven Kilbey – have always been the main songwriters.

 Perhaps The Church stayed out of the spotlight because the band’s sound is more than a sum of parts and remains hard to pin down. Toss in the 12-string jangles of The Byrds with guitar interplay of Television and dark New Wave tones of Joy Division and you’re in the ballpark, but that doesn’t quite do The Church justice. These rock and roll lifers wrap themselves in a sound all their own, centered on Kilbey’s deep, soothing voice, which sounded no different than on their earliest songs.

Splitting the concert into two sets, The Church opened by performing their entire second album, The Blurred Crusade. Their American label didn't release Blurred Crusade, deeming that it lacked "radio-friendly songs. I'm not sure what they heard, but this is an album filled with hooks, especially songs like the catchy, guitar-driven When You Were Mine. The manner with which The Church bashed through the album left nothing blurry behind

After one of Crusade’s shorter numbers, Kilbey quipped that shorter songs are better because they deliver more frequent applause. Of course, even on the eight-minute You Took, firm applause followed. Completing the album, the band added Life Speeds Up, an energetic B-side.

The second set spanned the band’s entire career, although casual fans would recognize more than half the songs. Kilbey took a two-song break from the bass to strike a few awkward frontman poses. Such odd moments didn’t stick, not with the strength of the band’s songwriting.

For their first Nashville appearance since 1988, The Church only needed one song to please the crowd. It should be law that any band that claims one U.S. hit single cannot omit it in concert. The success of the first entire show could sway based on that decision.

Each time the guitar tech brought out a 12-string guitar, I wondered if Under the Milky Way was imminent. A single hit can sometimes become a millstone for a band, but The Church have not disavowed the dreamy, psychedelic pop of that tune.  

Under the Milky Way was always going to make the second set. You might also know the song from a scene late in the cult film Donnie Darko. The live setting skipped the famous  “bagpipe” solo, which seemed hard to reproduce without an arsenal of synthesizers. Instead the band filled the song with more wiry guitar solos. As they already proved, its members have no problem improvising or extending songs.

They chased Milky Way with its followup song single, Reptile, a dark, uptempo number as memorable as its predecessor.

A short encored closed the night, with the band playing for 2 hours and 15 minutes (after a prompt 8 p.m. start). The Church closed with Miami, a song from Further/Deeper, their 24th and most recent album. Miami fit seamlessly with the band’s earlier material. Leaving as modestly as they arrived, The Church fluttered off the small Mercy Lounge stage with a few waves. Across those two sets, they awoke an interest in an overlooked band I could not have anticipated.