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Recent News June 10, 2010
the church on NPR's "World Cafe Live"!
During the church's successful North American "An Intimate Space 30th Anniversary Acoustic Tour," the band recorded a session for NPR's World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, PA. The popular program, hosted by David Dye at the WXPN headquarters, can be heard on over 200 NPR stations nationwide and will premiere on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010. You can find your local station by clicking on the following link www.npr.org , and for more information on the church, please visit www.mypsace.com/thechurchbandofficial .
March 01, 2010
the church ANNOUNCES SPRING TOUR!
the church announces “An Intimate Space 30th Anniversary Acoustic Tour” throughout April 2010. “An Intimate Space” will feature the church performing 1 song off each of their 18 albums, in reverse chronological order. To make these shows even more special, every ticket holder will receive a free copy of “Deadman’s Hand”, the third EP from the “Untitled #23” album. This EP will include the title track and unreleased tracks from the band’s secret vault. For more information on the church visit http://www.myspace.com/thechurchbandofficial
October 15, 2009
Twenty-One years later, "Under the Milky Way" still making waves
The church's 1988 hit single "Under the Milky Way" has resurfaced in the mainstream twice in recent weeks and is garnering praise from a whole new generation of music lovers. Indie-rock favorites The Killers (featuring special guest Chairlift) covered the tune in front of thousands of fans earlier this month at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, FL. The song was also tackled by Sia (of Zero 7) and is being used in the 2010 Lincoln MKT which can be seen running in prime time on network television right now. The use of UTMW in the 2001 psychological thriller "Donnie Darko" propelled the song into the new millennium and there's been no stopping it since. Over just the last few years it has been covered by the likes of Grant Lee Phillips, Echo and the Bunnymen, Coheed and Cambria, Kill Hannah, Rick Springfield and Nicole Atkins.
August 04, 2009
"Fricke's Picks" include the church!
In the August 6th, 2009 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, chief editor David Fricke gives a nod to both the church's most recent NYC performance as well as their latest record, "Unititled #23." Fricke explains that for 'nearly 30 years, the church's heavenly-treble raptures - driven by charter guitarists Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper - have been one of rock's most dependable and still-evolving trips." For the full article, please visit www.rollingstone.com
June 10, 2009
the church kicks off tour!
The church will take to the road this summer with 26 North American / Canadian dates beginning TONIGHT (June 10th, 2009) in Solana Beach, CA. Following their performance this evening, the church will appear on Los Angeles-based KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" show June 11th, where they will perform live in-studio at 11:15 AM (PDT). Seattle's KEXP will also host an in-studio church show, only hours before they play a KEXP-sponsored show at The Triple Door. Check the church's website for a complete list of tour dates.
April 01, 2008
SMASHING PUMPKINS PAY HOMAGE TO THE CHURCH
Playing their first shows in Australia since 1996, the Smashing Pumpkins included a cover of The Church's "Reptile" in the encore of their headlining set at V Festival Sydney. The Church, a band revered to be one of the best bands ever to come out of Australia, were one of the early pioneers of the "New Wave" and "Neo-Psychedelic" sounds of the 1980s. Countless bands cite the group as a major influence and imitate the sound they spawned over 25 years ago. To this day, The Church continues to write, record and tour both collectively and individually. Guitarist Marty Willson-Piper will embark on a solo tour of the US in May to support his new album, entitled "Nightjar" (to be released on Heyday Records in North America), and The Church will return for an extensive North American electric tour in the fall.
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 Untitled #23 is the new album by the church. It's a haunting, dark, thrilling, ecstatic, melodic psychedelic journey in ten unforgettable pieces.
To put it another way, Untitled #23 is the latest instalment in one of the longest, richest unbroken streams of creative endeavour the rock'n'roll era has ever witnessed. Steve Kilbey, Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper founded the church in Sydney, Australia, in 1980. Their public life as accidental hit makers is on the record: Under the Milky Way galvanised the world 20 years ago, and again in 2001 when it opened the smash cult film, Donnie Darko. Various hits collections attest to a distant era of similarly strange and subversive pop chart victories: The Unguarded Moment, Almost With You, When You Were Mine, It's No Reason, Reptile, Tantalised, Metropolis… all continue to appear, sporadically and often transformed, in the live shows that remain their life blood. But the church has always been in a parallel orbit to the pop world, a self-generating and utterly engaging art-rock trip that is far easier to experience than to describe – even by their passionate legions of fans around the world. Since the arrival of drummer Tim Powles some 15 albums ago, the quartet has hit on a peerless creative dynamic of amazingly rich and prolific dimensions, one that seeks no validation beyond the constantly evolving existence that now yields Untitled #23. "It's almost like the church simply plug in at will and stream this sparkling electric poetry from some guitar-shaped hole in the universe . . . Cobalt Blue begins the trip with disorientation . . . only to be sewn together near the end with an exquisite guitar dialogue. Pangaea, Happenstance and Operetta fall into the more pleasing structures of yore: a 12-stringed flurry here, an airborne choral hook there, an elegant afterthought of wind, brass or keys . . . and tunes lovely enough to hum. On Angel Street and Sunken Sun (are) gossamer weaves of dream narrative and telepathic restraint that scale the peaks of their most elegant work…" (The Age, Melbourne, April 2009)
Untitled #23 is one of four simultaneous releases streamed from the mystical crossroads of imagination and electricity that the church calls home, each released on their own Unorthodox label: Shriek: Excerpts From The Soundtrack is a long-playing ambient-literary hybrid in collaboration with American sci-fi writer, Jeff VanderMeer. The Coffee Hounds EP features three exclusive vocal and instrumental versions of The Coffee Song, as well as an astonishing cover of the Kate Bush classic, Hounds Of Love. The 4-song Pangaea EP includes the lead track of that title, from Untitled #23, plus 3 exclusive tracks with a song each sung by Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper and the latest tours namesake So Love May Find Us – an otherworldly musical exploration in 18 minutes of bliss. Throughout every phase of their strange, beautiful, disorienting journey, the four cornerstones of the church continue to greet and defy expectations: Kilbey the receiver of an endless stream of outlandish images, the guitars of Koppes and Willson-Piper spiralling, aquaplaning, morphing and diverging, and Powles the rhythmic conductor of their discrete and limitless creative cosmos… Michael Dwyer April 2009
Untitled #23 is available as a 6 panel digipak CD from April 3 in Australia and May 12 in North America. Untitled #23 will be available from mid-June on double gatefold vinyl, incorporating the three exclusive tracks from the Pangaea EP: LLC, Insanity and So Love May Find Us. |
