Will no-one think of the poor music reviewer? Steve Kilbey’s prolific output is matched only by the sheer quality of his songwriting, whether with The Church, solo or in collaboration with others. Having been involved with Backseat Mafia for the last 13 or so years, I have well and truly reached the limits of my vocabulary in finding new ways to laud his work. It really is exhausting.
And now there’s The Church’s 28th studio album, ‘Lacuna’: a straw that could well break the figurative camel’s back. I mean, there are seventeen songs to cover, and on just the first listen every one is a musical and lyrical wonder. I could simply repost every nine-plus-out-of-ten review I’ve written on anything vaguely related to Kilbey’s work, with only the song titles changed. But I shall persevere. Given my aforementioned limited vocabulary, I’ll be forced to recycle a few old superlatives for yet another wonderful release.
In general, there is a softer, more organic feel to this album, with a return to the classic jingle-jangle sound and more complex, nuanced guitar work. After the science fiction-infused magical realities of ‘The Hypnogogue’ and ‘Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars’, The Church have returned to solid ground with a soft landing. Gone are the surreal tales of distant planets and dream extractors. We are back with stories of love and loss, geographical journeys and human experience.
Kilbey calls the album “intense, forlorn, and exultant” — as tidy a summary as any for a band still finding new corners inside their own sound: jangling guitars, atmospheric post-punk, dream-pop haze.
Lyrically, this is a gentler, more reflective Kilbey. There’s also a sense that the rest of the band have flexed their musical muscles and made a greater contribution to the shimmering sound. More than any of their previous releases, it feels like a collegiate album. It was mostly recorded in Texas – a new experience for the band.
Opening track ‘Lumbini Grove’ starts softly with the singing of insects and birds and a gentle strum. That quiet introduction swells as the percussion enters, clattering like distant thunder. It’s a dreamy entrée that morphs into a fully formed song with reflective vocals, Kilbey’s voice cracking with melancholy over distant vocalisations in the ether. When the chorus kicks in, we’re in classic Church territory: soaring melodies on the solid foundation of a rousing twin-guitar attack.
‘Western’ is a softer, reflective tune, with Kilbey’s exposition delivered in his trademark dry style. The instrumentation is layered and delicate, a wall of crystalline guitars floating in the sky. It was recorded in Austin, Texas, and wears its location on its sleeve. Kilbey has said the title came straight from the setting, a nod to a childhood spent absorbing TV Westerns.
‘Ferrari’ floats on a gentle, dappled guitar line and a gorgeous harmony as Kilbey celebrates the beauty of a car alongside an obsessive love, rather dodgily rhyming ‘Ferrari’ with ‘February’. Still, he can be forgiven anything.
Especially when it’s followed by the absolutely epic ‘Sky River’. There are more geographical references over a pattering drum beat, but with the sweetest of melodies: a falsetto drifting in the ether, yearning ooh-la-las and a spoken interlude. It’s ethereal and breathtaking in a way only The Church can consistently master. ‘Sky River’ is up there with the band’s best material, and proof positive, as I always say, that creativity does not have a use-by date.
‘Winter’ continues down this path, another beautiful, hypnotic track with gently rippling guitars that floats in the heavens. ‘Have You Been Here Before’ displays a panoply of new sounds and instrumentation with its driving rhythms and many-layered textures. It’s slightly heavier, anthemic and very Bowie-esque, and Kilbey’s imaginative storytelling only adds to its force.
‘The Lemurian’ is a pounding, foreboding track with darker instrumentation that puts Kilbey’s vocal range on show. It’s contrasted by ‘Everytime’, with its lighter, almost madrigal sound. ‘Sky and Hill’ lightens the tone even more with its jingle-jangle bounce, underpinned by an acoustic riff that threads throughout. Kilbey says of the track:
I wrote this in the garden of Arlyn Studios in Austin, Texas one extremely hot afternoon. I thought it was vaguely like a Faces song or something with the acoustic guitar riff which the vocals follow. I’m sure some Nashville cat wouldn’t think it’s country at all, but there you go. A mélange of styles… and me imagining I’m an alt cowboy. Pretty funny, if you think about it.
‘Paladin’ is yet another heartbreakingly beautiful track, steeped in melancholy and exquisitely delicate melodies.
‘Martian Skyline’ is sombre and grand – a pattering percussive beat provides a light counterbalance to the shimmering jangling guitars and reflective, hypnotic vocals.
‘I Want It’ launches with a shimmering twelve string riff before it drifts into an anthemic rush, Kilbey’s voice in the distance, echoing and more falsetto backing vocals. The song subtly weaves around, changing direction suddenly before a sparkling return. It’s an hypnotic reverie that seems to float in the ether.
‘The Place of Eternal Spring’ drifts in from nowhere, the multi-instrumental layers emerging as if from a dream and is delivered quietly and with an intensity, almost like an interlude before dappled synths herald ‘Rapture’ with its rolling riffs and chanting delivery, echoing and distant, bursting onto a brightly delivered driving track that bounces with an ebullient hyperactivity.
Kilbey says of ‘Forever’:
Ash was sitting at the grand piano, playing around with some chords at Arlyn one morning. I joined in making suggestions and we came up with the music. That’s him on the very ‘George Harrison’ lead lines too. The lyrics fell out of the sky into my head. Channeling a little bit of Neil Young-esque atmospherics. It’s a very different style of vocal performance by me which I hadn’t really done before. It’s one of my favourite tracks on the album too.
‘Lumbini Theme (Slight Return)’ revisits the opening track in a brief instrumental that readies us for the regretted departure from this magnificent release. It is bold and anthemic, evocative and beautiful, hanging in the air like a necklace of diamonds.
The album closes with ‘Sacred Echoes’, the song that first heralded this new era when it appeared as ‘Sacred Echoes (Part Two)’ back in November 2025. Kilbey described the first iteration as unlike any previous Church song, and he wasn’t exaggerating. This version opens with a thunder before returning to the sparse piano that opened Part Two, before swelling into an almost orchestral storm, his weary vocal sitting at the point where hope and hopelessness meet. There are echoes of Bowie in Kilbey’s delivery, steeped in melancholia before the song deconstructs and collapses and fades away, exhausted, replete.
Donald Baldie’s accompanying video drew on Dorothea Lange’s Depression-era photographs, and the song has the same stark, haunted dignity. It’s a bleak and beautiful finale, “intense, forlorn and exultant” in Kilbey’s own words, and the perfect full stop.
A lacuna is a gap, a missing piece, but there is nothing missing here. These are seventeen stunning songs from a band in its 46th year who still sound like they have everything to prove and nothing to lose. My vocabulary may be exhausted; The Church, clearly, are not.
‘Lacuna’ is out on 6 November through Cooking Vinyl and you can order it here.
You can catch the band playing across Australia in November – and read our review of the opening Sydney gig here:
Feature Photograph: Adam Nicholas
