The Church ‘The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune’ tour of Australia kicked off in Perth this week with Steve Kilbey keeping his promise and resurrecting ‘The Unguarded Moment’ for the Australian audience.
Fans of the The Church were also treated at the first show in Perth to six songs from the upcoming 2023 album ‘The Hypnogogue’.
Some of the songs, ‘No Ascension’, ‘It Could Be Anyone’ and ‘Antarctica’ were played for the first time live by The Church while ‘C’est La Vie’ and ‘No Other You’ premiered earlier in the year on the US tour.
The title track ‘The Hypnogogue’ also premiered on streaming services hours before the tour.
“The album is a little proggie,” Steve Kilbey tells Noise11.com. “Some of it is complex, some of it is simple and typical Church. It was fun to play the new songs”.
Kilbey has designed the setlist for this ‘The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune’ tour on songs across the complete history of The Church. “I try to do a broad cross section of all of our stuff,” he says. “When we do festivals they want to hear all those old hits but I don’t think the audience coming to our shows want to hear all those. Sometimes people groan when we do ‘Under The Milky Way’ and ‘Alone With Me’. I wish I was completely freed up and didn’t ever have to do all that stuff. I wish I could just play new stuff but it is nice to do a cross section of this body of work. It all hangs together. It is not one of those careers where we did something else, and something else and something else. It’s a continuum. We haven’t deviated outrageously from what we first started doing”.
Watch the Noise11.com Steve Kilbey interview:
While Steve has the luxury of dropping some early Australian hits from an American setlist, he can’t avoid playing them here. “We will play all those songs,” he says. “They will be in there. We will be playing all the songs you expect to hear. In America, ‘The Unguarded Moment’ wasn’t a hit so we don’t have to play it. Why would I want to fucking play ‘The Unguarded Moment’? All the new music I’ve written since then! There’s three things. There is one where you can play a song and enjoy the happiness people get from it. Then there is the one you enjoy playing it but they don’t want to hear it. And the best one of all is when you play a song you want to play and they love hearing it. That’s the ultimate thing. What can I say? I hate fucking ‘Unguarded Moment’ but I play it and I do my best but the voice in my head is going “fuck, I wish I didn’t have to do this”.
The setlist for Show 1 in Perth, 1 September 2022 was:
No Ascension (new) First time played
Comedown (from Magician Among The Spirits, 1996)
Kings (from Priest = Aura, 1992)
Columbus (from Heyday, 1985)
Metropolis (from Gold Afternoon Fix, 1990)
No Other You (new)
Reptile (from Starfish, 1988)
C’est la vie (new)
The Unguarded Moment (from Of Skins and Heart, 1981)
Antarctica (new) First time played
It Could Be Anyone (new) First time played
Fly (from Séance, 1983)
Old Coast Road (from Further/Deeper, 2014)
Waiting for the Sun (Powderfinger cover)
Laurel Canyon (from Further/Deeper, 2014)
Is This Where You Live (from Of Skins and Heart, 1981)
The Hypnogogue (from The Hypnogogue, 2023)
Shadow Cabinet (from Persia, EP, 1984)
Under the Milky Way (from Starfish, 1988)
An Interlude (from The Blurred Crusade, 1982)
Tantalised (from Heyday, 1985)
Encore:
Grind (from Gold Afternoon Fix, 1990)
You Took (from The Blurred Crusade, 1982)
Encore 2:
Almost With You (from The Blurred Crusade, 1982)
TOUR DATES
Thursday, September 1: The Astor, Perth
Friday, September 2: The River, Margaret River
Sunday, September 4: The Gov, Adelaide
Thursday, September 8: The Metro, Sydney
Friday, September 9: The Princess Theatre, Brisbane
Saturday, September 10: Northcote Theatre, Melbourne
The tour line-up features mainstay Steve Kilbey on bass and vocals, Tim Powles on drums, Ian Haug on guitar, multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Cain and Ashley Naylor on guitar.
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