Let me tell you a little bit about Steve Kilbey… A long, long time ago–in the late 1980s, to be exact–an Australian rock band called The Church were on their way to significant mainstream success, or so it seemed. They had made impressive inroads into the Billboard Hot 100 chart with a darn-near perfect psychedelic pop ditty called “Under the Milky Way.” Its equally strong parent album Starfish went gold–no mean feat in that era of Poison and Def Leppard. Just imagine it: there our antipodean heroes were, trudging out of the musical underworld like Orpheus, singing those beautiful songs, playing those beautiful Rickenbacker guitars, closing in on the taillights of the Cure, damnit. But something happened. Perhaps they turned to look back at Eurydice too soon, taking their eyes off the righteous path just long enough for grunge rock to sail on by and steal all the glory. In the Church’s defense, no one could have predicted the impending Death of All Melody that would overtake the world for the better part of a decade.  In 1988, they were an up-and-coming band with nothing but bright possibilities stretching before them. And during that summer, my friend Joe Carpenter and I became thoroughly besotted with the quartet, though

Read more »