Goldfish (Jokes, Magic & Souvenirs)
by The Church
REVIEWS and COMMENTS
Until the American super-success of their last two Arista albums The Church's ambiguous twelve-string pop had always proved an article of faith to fans but too introverted for others.
Goldfish collects together all their videos, from their fledgling efforts in the early '80s right up to date with 'Metropolis', their recent hit single. Interspersed with short, sweet and whimsical links indicative of the band's reticence, it will be a joy to the converted. The earlier material however mostly staged in unremarkable rehearsal rooms — hands hitting chords, that sort of thing — and with no effort at contrivance, are overly dry.
However, with bigger budgets and greater confidence, leader Steve Kilbey's esoteric imaginings are given free reign, evidenced first by 'Tear It All Away' from the mid-'80s. Later The Church really stretched out, compelling images emphasising the band's various musical preoccupations like, for example, Kilbey's occasionally obvious debt to Ziggy Stardust and glam in general.
Mostly, though, The Church seek to show you how and what they think their shy music makes you feel. Given that, to untrained ears at least, many Church songs seem virtually identical, the videos help to separate the strands of Kilbey and Co's creative vision. 'You're Still Beautiful' and 'Reptile' are standouts and make Church fun, while others tend to lean too much on obscure ideas.
Not everyone's cup of tea then, but in the right hands a feast for the eyes.
Me acaba de llegar este dvd hace poco rato uno de los mejores dvd's de mi coleccion este dvd me dejo asombrado lo estoy vien estoy escuchan almost with you un video exellente q me regalo mi novia sin duda el mejor regalo a ella la amo mucho jajaj bueno me despido ya complete la collecion de the church. Wow.
CATHOLIC TASTE
[Photo caption: "The Church: towering cathedrals of sound"]
THE CHURCH
Goldfish (Jokes, Magic & Souvenirs)
BMG Video
It's hard to imagine a band more in sync visually with their music than The Church. Arguably the specialists in white male romantic rock, with an increasingly devotional worldwide student audience, the Sydney four-piece have drifted through the past decade fusing engaging lyrical gibberish with some terrific, chiming guitars; a recipe baked to perfection on this year's 'Gold Afternoon Fix' LP.
Goldfish is an 80-minute, 17-song, superb value insight into the world of The Church: soft-focus, foppish intellectuals offering rare beauty in a world of shady deals and hard cash. It's a myth they're comfortable with; if a more effete and windswept trio than Steve Kilbey (bass/vocals), Marty Willson-Piper and Peter Koppes (guitars) have ever existed, we'd really have to be talking Keats, Byron and Coleridge.
Goldfish is a thoroughly worthwhile venture: clever, mellifluous and, aside from the irritating "off duty" antics of the band which kind of negate their intellectual reputation, intoxicating stuff all the way.
Starting out with their 1981 single, 'The Unguarded Moment" - a beautiful Byrds-like electric slow motion - and setting similar blueprints for the REM/House Of Love slipstream brigade with 'Bel-Air' and 'Tear It All Away', they hit a scintillating visual mood for 1983's 'It's No Reason', thereafter swamping their films with strange girls, lush gardens, big 12-string guitars and loads of wind in their hair. The band, outrageous hams to a man, swashbuckle like billy-o with velvet collars, sleeves and cultivated pallors.
The unfeasibly pretty 'Under The Milky Way' gave them a big American hit in 1987 (sic) and the video's good too, especially the erotic scenes of a girl breaking an egg between lavishly-varnished fingernails. Since then, The Church have been a bit cocky video-wise, sticking in shots of whooping audiences in true stadium rock band style and generally arsing around with new-found technology and their record label's money.
At least 12 of these videos are splendid though. If you're a fan, tuck in with impunity. Or, if you've yet to have the pleasure of The Church, Goldfish will prove a perfect audio-visual introduction.
4 out of 5
There are finger-position close-ups aplenty in these clips documenting the 10-year career of The Church. From Australia, they are that kind of band, solidly four-square-in the upright position, more comfortable stool-bound, the better to address those frets and sing solemnly from behind their Beatlesque fringes, Rickenbacker a-jangle and Stratocaster a-squibble over a brisk but bookish backbeat.
Steve Kilbey is the man with the message, rendered in adenoidal versifying mode like The Cure's "Smiffy" after a whimsy by-pass operation. And, pray, what is the message? Pregnant with Zen-like significance yet sketchy in the particulars, these tunes confront the eternal verities. Who are you? Don't you love me? And who, for that matter, am I? Though hardly grating on the ear, not for a long time did The Church's quiet way with a tune and a sentiment make too many friends until US college radio adopted them as darlings two years ago. Beforehand their visual presentation was restricted to the likes of setting up in a wood at night and blowing a little dry ice about to cheer things up. In their mid-term creative upturn of It's No Reason and Fly, they get into gauze, slow-motion and the mystifying appearance of little children and so forth--the pocket surrealism favoured by psychedeliacs since time immemorial, and extended as fame and fortune grow with the song Tantalized into more exotic locations and conspicuous sums of money flung at the video editor.
In prosaic contrast, hand-held linking sequences ad-libbed on tour are too toe-curlingly self-conscious even for Jeremy Beadle's liking. *** (three stars)