Although their experience with mainstream success in the late 1980s was somewhat fleeting, the church remain one of Australia's most respected and influential bands, both on a national and international scale. Co-songwriter and guitarist, Marty Willson-Piper, is an interviewee of the most delightful kind. Affable and engaging, he speaks in the excitable, rambling manner of a know-all without pretence - a rare marvel.
yourGigs (yG): Have you noticed a new generation of fans who, perhaps engaged by singles collections or soundtracks such as Donnie Darko, are still finding the church as relevant as the older church fans?
Marty Willson-Piper (MWP): There is an issue with cross-age groups and bands from different generations. You go and see an older group and its generally older people there. When I was young I was just as interested in "old people's" music as what was happening in the hippest scene in the land. It amazes me how people become stuck in 'their' era.
What you need is to understand music is not about eras or about you, it's about the quality of the work. I'm as happy listening to a Miles David record as I am listening to a Killers record. I wish that the church could manage, with our 29-years experience together, to get it through to people that our music is not fuddy duddy at all and it never was. Young people who do come and see us who might have picked up on us from other mediums like Donnie Darko actually come along and go, "Wow cool, they might be 50 but they're great".
yG: Has it been hard keeping the band together for such a long time, especially seeing as not all of you live in the same country, or does all your time apart keep the band fresh?
MWP: We try very hard to get together every now and then to make music and make it work financially, efficiently and creatively. It's a business that needs to be run as well as a philosophy that has to be kept. You have to make all those things work; you can't just be brilliant geniuses lying around spending shitloads of money. You have to plan. You can't plan to be creative but you can plan to be in a room somewhere where you have a good chance of making some great art.
yG: How does the new album differ from the church's last full-length release?
MWP: Uninvited, Like the Clouds was a lot slicker and this one is a lot more spontaneous. It's left-of-centre but really melodic, and it's kind of spacey but really intimate. It achieves many magical things on many different levels. the church is always trying to find the line between professionalism and good musicianship and 'blanding out'. You can get too good, but you don't wanna try and be as bad as you can cause you think it's the only way to be creative. Everything is a balance. Neil Young is a prime example. He's obviously really great but he can also make it sound like he's falling over the chairs in the room, in a good way.
Nick Cave has that quality too, but he's certainly not slick. He sings something out of tune and people go, "Wow characterful!" They don't go, "Eurgh, out of tune". Everyone has their thing they're good at, and we should also learn not to condemn the people we don't understand. What the hell do I know about Beyonce? I can see what she does is really cool: brilliant dancer, brilliant singer and great music in a style. I like to respect her at a distance. There are not many things that I think suck.
yG: Was there anything in particular the band drew inspiration for Untitled 23 from?
MWP: The chemistry of the individuals always takes us off on some goddamn tangent. We know exactly what we don't want and want, but you can never actually pin point it. If you can pin point it, it seems like it's all over, so we're always searching for the invisible grail. I guess it's kind of like a spiritual search really; the search for the Creator. Who knows? All we know is something's going on and if we do things in this kind of magical way then we'll create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts, something that's beyond our experience and our understanding.
We don't want to let go of our knowledge and at the same time we don't want to presume that we know the answer to everything. As soon as you think you know the answer you turn into an average band. You've gotta have ambiguity and mystery and somewhere to go. As soon as you reach the end you'll have nothing. It's the journey which is the thing.
yG: Do you think you'll ever get to the end?
MWP: No. I don't think anybody ever gets to the end. It's an impossible situation, like looking at the back of your head. [Laughs.] As soon as people say, "Right that's it, this is exactly what I wanted to achieve", suddenly it's lost its magic. People who think they've achieved 'it' always sound bloody boring and overproduced with no intrigue at all. With people who are always trying to nail this certain thing, the glory is that they can't, and that's what makes it continue to be interesting.
Aimee-Lee Curran
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