The Church
Starfish

THE REVIEW

The Milky Way, a dark path stretching through the winding mazes of the night, a caravan of stars from the indefinite to the unknown. How many times has Steve Kilbey on sultry Australian nights lifted his gaze to count the stars, and how many times has he paused on the one that left the bright night universe to rest in an unknown basin of the immense ocean.

Starfish was the pinnacle of the Church's parabola, the song of the sirens. Yet, in the early days, it was deemed an unadventurous and saccharine album by detractors and early fans, accustomed to the strange and original formula of previous works, pop infused with traditional and canonical psychedelia, Byrds school, if you will. A quick and rash judgment leads to conclusions as easy as they are wrong. This album dispensed a unique and original alchemy to pop music, enriching the list of precious works that came from distant Australia, which lived its golden age in the eighties with Died Pretty, the Birthday Party and Nick Cave, Radio Birdman, and many others. Apparently linear and simple in its structure, Starfish is an unintelligible work that unfolds little by little, listen after listen. The delightful and perpetually melancholic pop woven by Peter Koppes' guitar (supported by Marty Willson-Piper's second guitar and the skilled Nick Ward on drums) sways gracefully over Kilbey's lyrics, a perfect, mutual understanding running on a wire of unique vibrations, of sensual and spiritual anxieties with high expressive values.

Incommunicability and immense sidereal spaces without the possibility of meeting, intersecting in the sinister riffs of "Destination" open the gates of heaven, projecting us towards the celestial path that we, eighties teenagers, traversed in our thoughts, in the darkness of our rooms, on the beach or in the countryside, in company or accompanied only by notes and words, imprisoned and gently funneled, unable to react, "something white and sparkling brings you here, despite your destination, under the Milky Way tonight." "Under The Milky Way" is more than a song, it is a dimension, an emotional state, a cornerstone of the entire '80s musical panorama, enchanting in its precious areas and original in the bagpipe-effect guitar solo. Kilbey pours warmth, pacifying us with beguiling infusions of words despite narrating of dirty money ("Blood Money") and emotional troubles ("Lost"), fine pop drenched in melancholy. "The song I prefer is the cry of the swift, because I associate it with summer," writes Trevor Cox. Starfish is, for me, a sonorous, eloquent representation of autumn and the autumns of my soul. It is extremely easy to lose oneself, find oneself, wander aimlessly ("North, South, East and West") in the infinite shores of this work, and when the atmospheres turn toward more colorful and festive horizons ("Spark," "Antenna," "A New Season"), twilight is just around the corner in the sharp lyrics of the hypnotic and fascinating ride named "Reptile." "Hotel Womb" closes the album quietly and without fanfare, just like all things simply perfect in their small imperfections, those we carefully store on our shelves, those hidden in a remote, unspecified point of the ocean.