From: Greg Hatmaker, gregh@mpinet.net Subject: gone fishin Date: 2/26/2002 10:09:36 PM To: seance@lists.no-fi.com snagged this interview off the womb. thought it was a pretty interesting read. posted by hiimpact. Time Off Interview ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- After Everything Now This is a bolt from the blue. Just when The Church looked content to tread water, they,ve delivered their strongest album since 1986,s Heyday and garnered the kind of critical praise usually reserved for the latest bright young thing. Vocalist and guitarist Steve Kilbey seems rapt by all the plaudits, including a glowing review in American Rolling Stone. ?It,s doing better than we,d hoped,? a surprised Kilbey boasts. ?It,s getting a few bad reviews in England, but everywhere else it seems to be pretty positive. I think that,s a really good thing. It,s hard when you,ve been going a long time not to fall by the wayside and become a band that still exists but isn,t seen to be progressing. Then people stop reviewing your records and things. It,s good to still be feeling like you,re out there playing the game. ?I thought it was a good record, but I wasn,t quite sure that everybody else would think that it was good. I thought it might be? a few comments I heard was that it was a bit mellow and smooth, but that,s what I like about it. One person could say OEIt,s mellow and smooth, and mean they really like it, but a heavy metal fan could dismiss it by saying OEThat,s so mellow and smooth,. One man,s meat is another man,s poison.? Kilbey agrees the album,s three-year gestation ^ recorded on three different continents ^ meant only the strongest songs made the final cut. ?We recorded an awful lot of songs and we even finished an awful lot of songs. In the end, everything worked out for the best. It was good that it happened the way that it did. ?A lot of love, time, care and attention went into this record, I,ll tell you. I think the important things are in the detail on this one. I,ve read a few reviews on the Net by fans who were saying every time they listen to it they can hear different things. I think that,s nice when you buy a record and you feel like you can keep discovering new things in it all the time.? Indeed, there,s nary a dud moment on the album: from opener OENumbers, through to the likes of OERadiance,, OEAfter Everything, and OEChromium,. ?That was one of the ones were recorded in Stockholm ^ in the first batch,? Kilbey says of OEChromium,. ?Marty wrote the lyrics and sings on that one, but [originally] I had a go at writing something for that and it wasn,t very good. I decided I couldn,t do anything with that piece of music and I told Marty he should do something with it and he did. I was really pleased he did because it was a great piece of music, but I could never match anything to it. ? OEAfter Everything, was written quite a long time ago in Marty,s house in England with the whole band sort of playing around in his lounge room. We had a couple of goes at recording it and played it on a tour? This version here is sort of a compromise of the two versions we were doing. It,s hard to hear because we,ve been doing this one so long it feels really old, but a lot of people have said they really like it. ? OERadiance, was written in Australia, actually. We had this piece of music we were jamming around with and all really liked. We recorded it in Sydney and were very happy with it. I,m not quite sure where the lyrics came from but, erm? We,re opening with it now, in our sets, so it,s one of our favourites. The guitar interplay is really intricate and melodic. I,m really pleased with that.? The album continues the band,s relationship with UK label Cooking Vinyl, with whom they signed in 1998. ?It,s a good place for us to be,? he says of Cooking Vinyl. ?They seem to specialise in bands like us. They don,t put any pressure on us to be this or that, do this or do that. I think they,re a really cool label for The Church and I feel it,s certainly the most suited label The Church has ever had. They,re not the biggest or the most powerful, but they,re the most suited. ?They,re not trying to sell a million copies, nor are we: we,re trying to make music we like. Hopefully enough people buy that to keep the record label and us going. That,s our aim and they seem to be quite happy with that.? Currently touring Europe, The Church plan to hit Aussie venues in May following dates in the US. And despite passing their 21st milestone last year, there are no plans to make a fuss about it. ?I think when you get to a certain stage, years aren,t something to celebrate,? Kilbey laughs. ?And all that is really irrelevant, how long we,ve been together. It doesn,t matter. Longevity isn,t something you really boast about in rock,n,roll. If the band had been together three weeks, then I,d have a lot of attitude, like OEWe,re fuckin, new man!, When you,ve been together a long time, it,s not something you think about. ?It just seems absurd to have been in this band longer than I haven,t been. I,m going to reach a halfway point soon where I,ve been in it most of my life. It,s just ridiculous! It was just a band ^ a gang of blokes ^ who started jamming around in Sydney. We always had lofty ambitions, but if when we started I,d said to the other guys OEI want to go for 22 years and release 14 albums and go around the world ten times, everyone probably would have laughed. ?It,s like when you read interviews with people who,ve turned 100 and they say OEHow did you do it?, and they,re like OEI dunno, I just kept living ^ I didn,t die,.? MATT CONNORS After Everything Now This is out now on Cooking Vinyl/Universal Music. Adam. ------------------- another (cheap) box