The Hall of Counterfeits
by Steve Kilbey & The Winged Heels
REVIEWS and COMMENTS
It was always obvious that Steve Kilbey is an extraordinarily complex chap, positively bursting with ideas, but over the past 18 months just how "bursting" he is has become manifest by his recording eight albums. Perhaps nine, since The Hall of Counterfeits is a double-album's worth, 22 songs, on CD - as diverse a collection as you can imagine. It could be his "White Album", or would be if Kilbey hadn't already recorded Remindlessness back in 1990. He tells us that that double-album was his attempt to take in everything he'd ever been fascinated by, an attempt to "reconcile the whole damn lot with a weird and wild bunch of songs far, far from the mainstream." Thirty years on, he reckons The Hall of Counterfeits is "my answer to myself" and that "time has enabled me to give voice to those same preoccupations" - from The Beatles to mysticism and beyond. Aiding and abetting him this time around are The Winged Heels - classical guitarist (and more) Gareth Koch, keyboards player Roger Mason and drummer Barton Price, the latter pair once an integral part of The Models, though there's nothing of that particular "past life" evident in their contributions to this sonic exploration of the multifarious arcane corridors Kilbey's fertile mind takes us. Just how in tune The Winged Heels are with that mind is evident not only in the whirl of sounds but also in their writing co-credits on ten of the 22 songs here. And it's all there - Beatles, Floyd, Bowie, the Middle East, the Medieval, the whimsical, the cosmic, psychedelic, pop, classical, myth, magic, obscurantism, the lot! There's even a sort of boogie in 'Everything for Sale'!! He might assure us, in 'Bound in Servitude', that "emptiness never stops", but it's obvious neither does his most extraordinary mind, firing on more cylinders than anyone has a right to still be able to boast 50 years into a creative career. Unmistakably Kilbey, quite simply, this is every kind of party mixtape you could ever wish - superb.
★★★★ (4 stars)
The Hall of Counterfeits is the latest installment in the brilliant recent run of Steve Kilbey albums. The long-standing Church main man makes a strong statement with his other band here, The Winged Heels. Stylistically, it follows on from his 2019 "ancient musics" album with guitarist Gareth Koch, Chryse Planitia, his 2020 solo album, Eleven Women, which also featured Koch plus multi-instrumentalist Roger Mason and drummer Barton Price (both ex-Models) and his tenth album with Martin Kennedy, Jupiter 13. On top of that he's already got a new album with The Church in the can.
This is a 22-track, 77-minute epic of varying moods, deep musical revelations, and intriguing possibilities. Effectively, it's a double album in the old vinyl currency. Kilbey himself dubbed it his "sprawling masterpiece" but he's canny enough to realise it's up to listeners to make that connection. It's the work of a genuine band, as opposed to a strict Kilbey solo effort. The Winged Heels (Koch, Mason, Price) have gelled as a formidable unit of great proficiency and genuine connectedness. Despite the often-sumptuous musicality on offer, its creation was swift with little deliberation or attention to perfection. You get the sense of its spontaneity without losing sight of the intent of the musicians.
Kilbey says the band worked well together, within the concept of getting everything down quickly. "I provide the structure for these guys to do their own thing," is how he puts it. "And within that Roger Mason is the best thing I've ever had at my fingertips because he can play so many different instruments and he's willing to go out on a limb. He's the guy with all the talent, I never tell him what to play. I say 'I think we need some sort of off-kilter piano here, or a cello there' and he'll come up with the right musical thing for the song. So, you'll have the sound of a scraping cello combined with Gareth's ancient music textures on guitar and Barton on drums. It's a weird mixture of Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, so it's not just electric guitars with reverb and echo, overtones and undertones, and it's not all perfect."
Koch's slide and acoustic guitar playing is elegant and refined. Price's drumming is subtle and sympathetic, given that he's predominantly been known as one of the country's hardest hitting players. Mason contributes everything from piano, organ, cello, dulcimer and mandolin to nyckelharpa, hurdy gurdy, synthesizer, percussion and Mellotron strings.
Mason certainly brought a lot to the table. "Because I have an array of eclectic instruments, I like to push the boundaries," he says. "I'm not a master of any of them but I've always been inspired by the different colours they provide. So that was my particular style I brought to the album. Steve has his eccentric poet style and Gareth has his classical style. Steve would come in with his song ideas and it was the philosophy of rough and ready, pure inspiration, for better or for worse. It's completely different from how I do my soundtrack work. We'd start something and I'd say 'okay, can we do another take?' and Steve would say, 'no, we've got it'. the whole thing was driven by his mad, eccentric energy."
Musically, the album takes in acoustic rock, jangle pop, dream pop, art pop... call it what you will, and there is a lot to take in. The tracks range from the ethereal opener 'Arcadia' ("Arcadia you look so sweet / kings of this world are falling at your feet"), the up tempo 'Brass Razoo' which is typically Kilbeyesque, 'I've Been Here Before' with its Arabic modes and 'Karnak' with its droney cello and clattering percussion redolent of ancient melodies, on to 'Anglesea' featuring more of Mason's cello, 'Tantric Hammer' which is close to The Church's occasional eccentricities, and 'I Wish' with its playful melody and vocal delivery.
The title The Hall of Counterfeits references Kilbey's approach to the recording. "I believe I have the ability to channel songs and voices and words," he explains. "Here are 22 versions of me pretending or imitating or appearing as if I'm something else. Singers have always had that ability. In a song you can be whatever you want to be and people can either go with it or not. You are being a character, I'm presenting these faux-people that I've dreamed up and they're all different. With the aid of my wonderful musicians we're trapping situations in a musical cup. They're not real. So, it's like a hall full of stories and lies and fibs and confabulations and imaginings and reveries and visions all mixed up."
As a double album, it is a lot for the casual listener to contend with. I've listened through fully on several occasions now and it does work as a whole. Yet does it work piecemeal? Does Kilbey have faith in his listeners to fully indulge themselves and absorb all on offer? Or is he happy for them to take it as an "as it comes" proposition? Kilbey says, "I didn't expect people to take it all in at once, it is densely packed. It depends on people's attention spans. If they don't like the 'ancient songs', I'm happy for them to just make their own playlist of the 'song songs'."
For a final stamp on the album's modus operandi, Kilbey includes a Friedrich Nietzsche quote (from Twilight Of The Idols) in the album credits: "Without music, life would be a mistake..." What does that mean to Kilbey? "I remember when I was young my father asked me what was most important in life. I said 'music' and he said 'and don't you ever forget it'. I was so grateful to him, he taught me that and he always had a lot of faith in my love for music. So that's why that Nietzsche quote resonates with me. I'm a dilettante when it comes to philosophy but that quote summed up a lot of things for me."
The prolific Steve Kilbey has teamed up with his musical comrades, Roger Mason, Barton Price and Gareth Koch to produce an epic album that manages to encompass all that SK aspires to musically of late.
The medieval airs and haunting beauty of Arcadia. The trademark Kilbey charm and erratic, sad beauty of Swinging On The Moon. The more spiritual, indigenous, desert-tripping of Karnak. The slow, gorgeous tale that is Warren.
With no less than 22 tracks, this is a true musical journey through the enhanced creative mind juices of the former Church frontman.
There's a spatter of Indian (Horizon), lazy Church-esque popestry (Brass Razoo), beautiful yet sad infiltrations (I've Been Here Before, Love Song Yet To Be Named) and some darker, epic moments (Anglesea).
If ya love SK, then you'll be more than impressed with this collection of creative genius....with more than a touch of madness.
7.6 (out of 10)
Steve Kilbey is one of Australia's most prolific songwriters, from his eighties heyday with The Church through the ensuing decades, including not just The Church but also solo material and a ton of team-ups. His latest pseudo-solo work (and latest band name), Steve Kilbey & The Winged Heels, has put out the massive and diverse sixties psych The Hall of Counterfeits.
First things first, Hall is indeed big, 23 tracks, an hour and 23 minutes run time. It distinctly has the feel of a veteran artist getting to do what he wants and taking full advantage of it. It all means that the double-album is a bit of an undertaking for the listener, a 'passion project.'
Yet the size, and Kilbey's skill, means that there are a number of quality tracks, if also ones you might skip. Best is probably the hopeful sixties psych-pop in pieces such as "Anglesea", the wry "Everything's For Sale", and "Beginning of Mercy". There are other standouts, like the pressing pop mission of "Brass Razoo" and the tragic "Love Song Yet To Be Named" closer, not to mention when he veers into more of a Middle Eastern sound (definite sitar feeling) with the likes of "Warren", "Horizon Meets the Ground", "Amorous Plethora", "Tears of Mer Ek" and others.
The acoustic psych angle and large size means there is some wandering ("Ariadne") and drone ("A Temple") that the record could have probably done without. But this is an overstuffed vision from one of today's leading songwriter.
This quartet may not possess the lush mammoth sound of the Church a la their best-known tune, "Under The Milky Way," or 1982's The Blurred Crusade, but it's not that far from it either, even with Gareth Koch's classical and flamenco guitar at the forefront (along with a host of other stringed ethnic instruments). Yet as suggested by "Arcadia," the very first track (and others further along the tracklist), there are simply too many similarities on too many cuts over the roughly two-hour album duration for Kilbey to completely avoid comparisons to his main occupation. And maybe he just doesn't want to: on that opener, deeply reverberating instrumental and sound effects interwoven into an arrangement topped with his own heavily echoed vocal certainly dovetail with a readily recognizable style (at least to Church fans). In the long run, it's something Steve can be proud of.
8.5 (out of 10)
Mysticism and magic, ancient histories and strange foreign lands, deities and fortune tellers: they all roam throughout the landscapes of the vast double album. Kilbey is a poetic shaman leading his band of musicians through differing textures - the one seamless element that binds and creates a cohesive whole.
Ultimately, 'The Hall of Counterfeits' is a magnificent journey through the exotic, magical and mysterious mind of Steve Kilbey: a mystical fertile land that is psychedelic, multi-textured and mind-expanding. Delivered with a coterie of musicians who are masters of their craft: a mix between the academic intricacies of Koch's inherent classicism and the pop sensibilities of Price and Mason.
★★★★★ (5 stars)
At 23 tracks, The Hall of Counterfeits isn't the standard musical release we've become used to in the 21st century. It's not a sparse collection of songs meant to be digested in one sitting, then promptly forgotten as our brains become distracted by numerous internet diversions and streaming television. No, it's an old-school investment, a double album that demands your undivided attention, which takes multiple listens to fully appreciate all the unique quirks and textures. And for all its off-the-cuff qualities, it is truly meant to be listened to as presented: in sequential order, so that one can appreciate all of its odd and wonderful twists and turns in the way its maker intended.