GOLD AFTERNOON FIX - ARISTA PRESS RELEASE

The price of gold. That's the answer to the question you may be asking. The price of gold, set every afternoon and fixed overnight. A stock market term. Gold Afternoon Fix: Among its many meanings, the title of the latest album by The Church.

Bands, like titles, are always open to interpretation. Yet as the 90's begin, The Church and their music have never been more direct, more compelling, or more meaningful. Or, for that matter, more familiar. Ten years together, and Australia's one-time best-kept secret now follow up their best-selling Starfish album with and even stronger effort likely to be their most successful album to date.

And now, more than ever, people are listening. People who first heard The Church with Starfish's "Under The Milky Way" single (their first Top 40), new fans who went back and for the first time heard Church classics like Of Skins And Heart, The Blurred Crusade, Seance, Remote Luxury and Heyday, all reissued following the success of Starfish. And, as these fans investigated further, they found The Church offered more than a bountiful back catalog indeed, the band's three primary members, Steve Kilbey (bass, vocals), Marty Willson-Piper (guitar, vocals) and Peter Koppes (guitar, vocals) have for some time been recording their own much-praised solo projects, and as Gold Afternoon Fix makes its way into the marketplace, that trio's three latest efforts - Remindlessness, Rhyme, and From The Well, respectively - have helped pave the way.

Yes, it's a tired cliche, but yes, it's true: If a band could ever be said to be more than the sum of its parts, it's The Church. With nine solo albums between them, The Church might be expected to be on the verge of disintegration, and Gold Afternoon Fix might well be a directionless, ego-filled document of aural pain. And were they a lesser band, that might be so. But a lesser band they are not - and as you'll hear from the opening notes of "Pharaoh" through the closing note of "Grind", The Church - above all else a group, a band - have never been so focused, so intense, or so together. Gold Afternoon Fix may mean many things, but here and now it means The Church have released their best album ever.

"I think what's happened is that everone's got their things off their chest," says Steve Kilbey, the group's bassist and principal vocalist/lyricist. "No one's got an axe to grind, coming on and saying, "I've written this song I want to do. Now it's more like everyone's got their own stuff done, everyone wants to interact more."

Gold Afternoon Fix is indeed a true Church collaboration, more so than any past efforts: The band co-wrote all the music, and the lyrics are sung by whichever bandmember penned them, (in this case, Willson-Piper sings "Russian Autumn Heart", Koppes "Transient" and Kilbey the remainder). Returning to co-produce the album with the band is L.A. super sessioneer Waddy Wachtel, whose main contribution, says Kilbey, was "just getting the best performances out of us. And it's strange - because I listen to the record now and it's almost mathematical in its perfection. Everything's happening where it should be; it's as if all the guitars and everything have become all these little machines working away in clockwork. Waddy was very instrumental in getting it to sound like that."

Noticeable as well on Gold Afternoon Fix is a new directness of approach both musically and lyrically, most apparent on "You're Still Beautiful". That straightforwardness is entirely purposeful, says Kilbey. "I've wanted to get a bit more of a bite into The Church on all levels - I think for too long we've been sort of dreamy. And after going around the world for two years and touring, doing all the things I've done, meeting all the people I've met and going through all the things I've gone through, suddenly I'm filled with this desire to more or less tell it how it is. I don't want to lose that surrealistic side that obviously attracted people to us in the first place - but three or four years ago I wouldn't have written that song, because I would have thought it was too much. But now I think the time has come and I want to get a bit more bite. Because life is full of nasty little surprises and I want to start conveying that."

At the moment The Church are preparing a world tour that will take them to Australia, Japan and the U.S. through 1990. Replacing longtime Church drummer Richard Ploog - who has taken a year-long leave of absence from the band - will be Jay Dee Daugherty, former drummer of the Patti Smith Group, among other credits.

"I think we're going to rock out a little bit more," Kilbey predicts. "But once again, these things move in curves - and after doing these songs for a year on the road, we might totally curve away from it and go back to being hazy and vague and dreamy again."

Gold Afternoon Fix? "To me, now," he says, "the phrase means a record to play on a nice afternoon."