By 1988 The Church found themselves at a crossroad in their career. Previous album Heyday (1986) had seen only modest sales at home despite critical acclaim, yet their international profile only seemed to grow. As a result the band was dumped locally by EMI, but signed a subsequent deal with American record label, Arista.
We Are Lost: The Church Find Their Destination in L.A.
Under considerably more pressure than at any other point in the career so far, The Church set to work in LA with soft rock producer Waddy Wachtel, most famous for working with Dylan and The Stones amongst others. This may have seemed like an odd pairing for the group and was perhaps just a further indicator of the commercial pressure the band would now be under.
Thankfully the pressure for “hits” and success brought out the best in The Church. Although distinctly ‘80s in sound and production, even today, Starfish holds up as a pinnacle of great song writing and performance. Recorded largely in live takes, Starfish mixed the strong core features of The Church, Kilbey’s oblique yet poetic lyrics and the interplay of guitarists Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes.
Starfish Goes Golden: The Church Receive Commercial Success
Not as lush or warm as Heyday, perhaps as a reflection of the cold surrounds of LA, Starfish was a more desolate affair. The arrangement of the songs was stripped back, relying more on the energy of the band’s skilful performance and the crisp, clean production of Wachtel.
The result was a an album that promised more commercial success than the band had ever delivered, yet still maintained the quality and integrity of the band’s material. Propelled by the success of lead single Under The Milky Way, the band would find this success with the single going into the Billboard Top 40 Charts and the album going gold.
Beyond The Milky Way: The Rest of Starfish
Although Under The Milky Way must be acknowledged as a classic, Starfish has much more to offer than this bittersweet anthem alone. The album is laced with songs that stand out as wonderful. Kilbey’s strength as a lyricist had only grown since Heyday and even reaches masterful heights on opening track Destination, an almost alien and slightly disturbing introduction to the album. Kilbey seemed to revel in his new, lyrically heavy material. A Bob Dylan admirer, tracks like Blood Money and Antenna, with a rather obvious Dylan impersonation, exhibits Kilbey’s fondness for the man and the profound influence he took from the legend.
Although Kilbey was displaying a new depth in his creative output, so too were The Church’s gunslingers, Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes. Whereas on previous albums the gap between Kilbey’s song writing and his cohorts seemed larger, here the band was firing on all cylinders. The Wilson-Piper penned Spark and Koppes’ A New Season showed that they too had honed their craft.
Reptile displayed a new and distinctively sinister sound to The Church. The song also demonstrates another key development of the band on Starfish, an increased focus and complexity of the guitar playing of both Wilson-Piper and Koppes. It was the almost aggressive playing, at points both guitarists intertwine lead parts on the same track, which contributed to the energetic feel of the album.
Hotel Womb closes things off in the album’s familiar unfamiliar. The sense of space on the album is never more apparent than here. The guitars soar higher than any other point on the record, feeling oddly at home with Kilbey’s strange musings. Mirroring the album’s opening, the sound glides away leaving us in barren isolation whether it is in the Amazon or a bustling metropolis…we’re never quite sure. In a sense it is the ambiguity, almost indifference at times of Kilbey’s delivery, coupled with the beautiful arrangements of the music that makes Starfish such an affecting album. Whereas so many other records made in the 1980s seem to suffer from the laboured and overblown production of the day, Starfish is still vital and continues to remain so.
