The Church On Sunday

[waitingman]

The Church
By Bernard Zuel
October 8, 2005

A four-disc set captures the polished pop and atmospherics of a band of contenders.

Starfish / Gold Afternoon Fix /Priest=Aura / Sometime Anywhere (EMI)

As the late 1980s eased into the '90s, the Church, a band almost a decade into its career, stood on the precipice, looked into the valley of major success and took two steps back.

At the beginning of the period covered in this four-album reissue, the Church were Australian stars, with strong guitar-driven, glam-meets-jangle songs that won them new pop fans while holding on to the old (paisley) underground support. By the end of it, they had settled into an atmosphere-driven style that had touches of prog rock and German-influenced electronic music. They would never darken the doorsteps of commercial radio again.

To some it may have looked perplexing, if not downright insane. After all, surely everyone - not least the band's hugely ambitious principal songwriter and singer, Steve Kilbey - wants to sell as many records as possible?

But the decision to withdraw from the fray might well have saved the band, which - with the exception of drummer Richard Ploog, who left after the first two of these four albums - is still recording, playing and writing together.

As Starfish shows, there was no "coulda been" about it: in 1988-89, the Church were contenders. They had an American hit, which has since become an Australian staple (Under the Milky Way), backed up by an album that was the most highly polished collection of pop songs of their career. They took the idea further with the underrated Gold Afternoon Fix, which - with songs such as Metropolis and You're Still Beautiful - could and maybe should have built on what Starfish had wrought. The problem was that the gloss was starting to get in the way of the songs and the effort being made to be the commercial entity was more obvious and less satisfying for them as much as us.

In the wide open spaces of Priest=Aura (with its appropriate cover of a desertscape and a lonely sentinel dog), Kilbey and guitarists Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes began the shift away. This is a twilight album, of long shadows and a slight chill, and in many ways it is the most timeless of their career. Here the band expanded on ideas that had always been part of Church albums: gracefulness balanced by moodiness; drive channelled through ambience.

By 1994, with Sometime Anywhere, the pattern was set for the next decade. This is no longer twilight but a night where life throbs behind shuttered windows and faces blur at the edges. For the Church, mood and tone became more important and they found a smaller, but loyal audience.

My favourite Australian guitar band - nice to see them get the recognition they deserve...

And at the other end of the scale...



Dracula Triumphant
Reviewed by George Palathingal
October 8, 2005

Theatre Royal, October 5
Until October 15 (somehow I think it will close a lot sooner... read on)

You know you're in trouble when it's opening night - thus, presumably, the full house is largely comprised of friends and family of the cast and crew - and less than half the audience returns after the interval.

The new rock opera Dracula Triumphant looked promising, with its minimalist monochrome set and dramatically lit stage. It takes the principal characters from Bram Stoker's 19th-century novel, reinventing the titular hero as the martyred St Sebastian, although he's still doomed to spend eternity feasting on the blood of others.

T.J. Power's Sebastian, rechristened Dracula and partial to leather strides, gets entangled in a bizarre love pentagon with newlyweds Jonathan and Mina Harker (Simon Brook McLachlan and Michelle Pearson), Lucy Westenra (Virginia Natoli) and a new character, Lucy's autistic brother Thomas (David Morris). Their various rendezvous put them in eye-catching scenarios, from an art gallery opening to a cabaret club full of shirtless studs and lap-dancing vixens, and usually end with some neck-chomping of the non-sexual kind.

In their commendably ambitious efforts, Morris (lyrics, music) and Aaron Kernaghan (music, direction, orchestration) have eschewed the camp approach, aiming for the tragedy and (melo)drama of Stoker's text. Unfortunately, they have wound up with an unmemorable score that is too often confusing and unintentionally comical.

The Thomas character apparently turns into Lee, the punk kid from Australian Idol, after he gets his inevitable bite. He also has a hilarious penchant for pretending to ice-skate off the stage. At one intensely emotional point, a French horn parps inappropriately.

Every last line is sung, which may work in Italian for Verdi and friends, but it doesn't for the odd banal English phrase - and it certainly doesn't when even the show's strongest singers sometimes fall, Icarus-like, before notes they can't reach.

It's the sort of production that even the Australian golden boy Hugh Jackman would have trouble saving, as a Broadway star or in his film role as Dracula's nemesis, Van Helsing (who could at least have put some of these doomed souls out of their misery).

For Dracula Triumphant ultimately provides yet more evidence as to why the words "rock" and "opera" should be kept well away from each other.

They should have hired Kim Newman.