Something Quite Peculiar

by Steve Kilbey

With some 37 years in the music industry, Steve Kilbey has some stories to tell. Best known as the lead singer and enigmatic front man, songwriter, bassist of The Church, Steve has experienced both amazing international success and all the excesses that go with it, as well as a well known heroin addiction that delivered some very dark times.

The Church has been a significant and constant influence on the Australian music industry and readers will be keen to hear from one of the industry's most successful, creative and long-standing key protagonists. Kilbey is Australian rock and roll royalty and for the first time this is his story. Come inside the world of Steve Kilbey singer songwriter and bassist of one of Australia's best loved bands, The Church.

From his migrant ten pound pom childhood through his adolescence growing up during the advent of The Beatles, Dylan and The Stones to his early adventures in garage bands and neighbourhood jams. His misadventures with a full time job and a 9 to 5 life and wild adventures with The Church as they conquer Australia and then the world. The tours. The records. The women. And then the heroin addiction which enslaved him for ten long years. Then the two sets of twins he fathers along the way and branching off into acting, painting and writing.

From snowy Sweden to a cell in New York City, from Ipanema beach to Bondi, Kilbey stumbles through his surrrealistic life as an idiot savant that will make you smile as well as want to kick him up the arse. After coming out the other side his tale is simply too good not to be told. Narrated with unusual and often pristine clarity we and with much focus on his considerable musical talent.

Genres: Music, Biography, Biography Memoir, Autobiography

273 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2014

Reviews

[Paul Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Church are probably the best Aussie band and one of the best of all time, but I would only recommend Steve Kilbey’s autobiography to those who are already longtime fans.

During Kilbey’s high school debating-team days one of his opponents was an oily little spiv called Malcolm Turnbull, who would later go on to be one of Australia’s worst prime ministers. Turnbull was just as much of a wanker back then as he is now!

[Arthur Graham]

And it's something quite peculiar
Something shimmering and white
Leads you here, despite your destination
Under the Milky Way tonight

— Under the Milky Way, The Church

Well, I suppose AC/DC is fine n' all, but can we PLEASE just give it up for pretty much the greatest rock band ever to emerge from that region of the world we're pleased to call 'down under'? Review to come, but in the meantime please enjoy:

Miami
Aura
When You Were Mine
Terra Nova Cain
Hotel Womb
One Day
The Unguarded Moment
Happenstance
You're Still Beautiful
Fading Away
Block
Disappear
Anaesthesia
North, South, East and West
Russian Autumn Heart
Tantalized
A Month of Sundays
Comedown
Shadow Cabinet
Numbers
Laughing
Tear It All Away
Radiance
Feel
Destination
Seen It Coming
Ancient History
Paradox
To Be In Your Eyes
Electric
Reptile
Fly
Buffalo
Lost
It's No Reason
Ripple
Too Fast For You
Dome
Metropolis
Sealine
Loveblind
Now I Wonder Why
After Everything
No Explanation
Almost With You
Volumes
Constant In Opal
Field of Mars
Louisiana
Just For You
A Fire Burns
Telepath
The Night Is Very Soft
She'll Come Back For You Tomorrow
Myrrh
Already Yesterday
Columbus
Electric Lash
Bel Air
Someone Special
Day of the Dead
A Different Man
Violet Town
Invisible

[Andrew McMillen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steve Kilbey’s rock ’n’ roll memoir 'Something Quite Peculiar' is a book best described using the adjective of its title, as the abrupt and unfulfilling closing chapters are completely out of sync with the generous story that comes before. What starts as an entertaining and informative autobiography by one of Australia’s most idiosyncratic musicians peters out and leaves the reader frustrated by what could have been.

Surely this can’t have been a stylistic decision on the author’s part, as much of the 1980s, the most commercially successful period of Kilbey’s band The Church, are coloured in vivid ­detail and powered by strong narrative momentum. Rather the book’s incomplete nature suggests a writer up against a hard deadline. Fans are sure to be disappointed that the more recent years of Kilbey’s life flash by in too few pages.

The positives of this book are many, most notably the author’s wry self-awareness and his ability to tell stories. From the opening pages it’s clear we’re in safe hands. Born in Hertfordshire, England, Kilbey was three when his family moved to Australia.

They settled in Wollongong, where his ­father was a foreman and his mother worked in an insurance office. Their eldest son soon found a taste for attention-seeking — or, as he puts it, “an incredibly precocious pretentiousness was beginning to manifest in spades: an intrinsic desire to perform and be rewarded”.

In early high school, in the Canberra suburb of Lyneham, he saw a live band for the first time at a school social and saw his future: “I felt implicitly that my place was up on the stage making the music, not down there dancing around.”

Kilbey’s vast musical IQ thus began developing at age 16, when he opted for a bass guitar instead of its more popular six-string cousin, and began learning his favourite songs by ear. Soon he joined a popular local covers band named Saga. This plum gig earned him almost as much as his father was making, but more importantly Kilbey could play close to 1000 songs by the end of his 18-month tenure.

These scenes from Kilbey’s youth are written in an easy, conversational style. Richly drawn and compelling, his story is buttressed by plenty of comic self-deprecation and wry foreshadowing for the international rock star he’d become.

Over the years, much has been made in the music press of the fractious, fraught relationship between members of The Church, a band that has achieved much in its 34-year career and is still recording. Things didn’t begin well when Kilbey enlisted a former schoolyard bully to play drums in the band’s first incarnation. Nor, decades later, when the tedious nature of months-long world tours spent in close confines with the same handful of men would eventually lead to tantrums, sabotaged gigs and mid-tour walkouts.

Kilbey identifies himself as the ultimate self-saboteur, however, when he tries heroin for the first time in 1991, at age 37, and subsequently loses the next 11 years of his life to addiction. Fittingly, these final chapters take a dark turn, and the frivolous, funny narrator is replaced by a man filled with pain and regret. “It’s quite an upheaval to write much of the story from here on in,” he notes on page 250. “It doesn’t come lightly or pleasantly like the earlier chapters: each memory fills me with shame and revulsion and sadness in differing amounts.”

Fair enough. The book’s final 20 pages are some of its most interesting and insightful, devoted as they are to describing and analysing this period of Kilbey’s life. However, it’s a cop-out that the third-last paragraph in the book begins, “So I left Sweden in 2000 for a couple of years in America after having met an American girl on tour in 1999, and had another pair of twins.” What? It is bizarre that these seemingly key moments in his life are reduced to a flippant sentence in the closing pages. (We learn in the outro that Kilbey’s first pair of twin daughters, Elektra and Miranda, are musicians in a Swedish pop duo named Say Lou Lou — another interesting admission left way too late.)

Perhaps cursory dismissals such as these are intended to highlight the egocentric and self-obsessed nature of the author, traits which Kilbey readily acknowledges. But the absence of any detail of his more recent years — besides a brief opening scene at the 2010 ARIA Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and a closing scene at a 2011 Sydney Opera House show — leaves a sour taste. For all the space devoted to discussing songwriting techniques, killer live shows and the importance of strong encores, what’s most peculiar of all is that this fascinating story ends on such a weak note.

(Review originally published in The Weekend Australian on January 17, 2015: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...)

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming on top of a truly excellent new album from The Church, the release of Steve Kilbey’s autobiography is the icing on the cake for fans. It’s an enjoyable, unpretentious book - it doesn't aim for greatness, just getting the stories down - written in a humorous, candid, conversational style that reflects Kilbey’s public talking voice, with only one detour into poetry (a central section depicting a day in the life of a touring musician). It’s a long way from the languid, esoteric lyrics and the aloof musical persona.

It effortlessly evokes a suburban Canberra childhood in the 60s; post-school days in search of a musical voice; the founding of The Church and its glory years (and some not so glorious); musical and chemical adventures all around the world; the splendours and miseries of drugs and a lost decade on heroin. Coming from an artist who has cultivated mystery and the arched eyebrow, it’s refreshingly human and self-aware, even when settling old scores.

I found the description of his teenage years particularly interesting, as a picture of how an ordinary kid from an ordinary home can become - something quite peculiar. (It's a lesson for parents with teenagers, certainly.)

I was present at the recent launch of the book in Fremantle, having seen Kilbey earlier this year on a double-bill with Robyn Hitchcock - a quirky and wonderful show. The man is astonishingly talented and prolific, a natural raconteur, and shows no sign of letting up. Indeed the latest album promises a career renaissance. I don't know if he has another book in him, but this one will do for now.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye]

Pending a Review:

The Church: "Seance" (EMI)
[Review published in "Semper", 18 July, 1983]

For nearly three years now, the Church have been the most wrongly maligned group in Australia.

The music press have been so keen to attack Steve Kilbey's so-called arrogance that they have overlooked the one thing that really matters - he has been responsible for some of the most exhilarating music to come our way for some time.

Part of the problem is that the Church started to plough a field of melodic rock before pop music came back into vogue.

Unfortunately for them, some of the mud thrown on them from a distance stuck, and it is only now that they can be appreciated free of the anti-pop prejudice of the past.

This should be welcome news for the Church, because they seem to be performing at the peak of their ability. They established a distinctive style long ago, but on "Seance", they have improved on it.

Gone are the rough edges, the false starts, the perfunctory chord changes. What remains are 10 perfectly arranged pop/rock songs.

The group still rely on the familiar Byrds-like twin guitar approach that has become their trademark. However, songs like "Fly", "Electric" and "It's No Reason" are very effectively based around acoustic guitar and keyboards.

Combined with the even more adventurous "Travel by Thought", they hint that the Church might be prepared to take greater risks with their arrangements as they become more popular.

Steve Kilbey has overcome the occasional flatness in his vocals, and on "Seance" he is more expressive than ever. There are still hints of David Bowie (circa "Hunky Dory") in his songs, but I suspect this is more because they share a peculiar romantic and melodic imagination.

Kilbey once described his lyrics as "deep without a meaning", and he might just have been right. But on this album, he seems to be aiming for an impressionism which captures moods with layers of words instead of paint.

Suggestions of romance and lost innocence wind their way through "Seance" (it would have made an ideal soundtrack for the last moments of "Bladerunner"), although ultimately it is enough just to enjoy the sound of the words ("The electric lash of trees in the studio/Fills my head with light"), rather than seek out some coherent message.

"Seance" is the most perfectly conceived of the Church's albums to date, and the first side ("One Day" and "Electric" in particular) is impossible to fault.

It might not be a psychic experience, but it's enough to convince this sceptic that there are few groups who can match the magic of the Church at their best.

[Bradley Hanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having just completed a re-read of Mick Karn's brilliant autobiography, I wanted to tackle Steve Kilbey's book as I am an enormous fan of The Church. I had the privilege to meet them on several occasions in Minneapolis, one of them mentioned in this book when Kilbey notes how well received the band were in Minneapolis, with a line of 400 out the door to meet them! Ultimately, this book has too many references to his affairs and a lot of self-aggrandizing, offset somewhat by him being plagued with self-doubt, despite repeatedly noting how positive and supportive his parents were. I do recommend it to fans of The Church, and it caused me to seek out the many albums I hadn't heard between 1990-2009 (the heroin years for Steve). Albums to listen to that you might not be aware of "After Everything Now This," "Forget Yourself," "Hologram Of Baal," and "Uninvited, Like The Clouds."

[Hayley Bessell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. I found his stories fascinating, funny and insightful.

[Jimmy Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

You really need to be a fan of The Church for this book. The usual tale of sex, drugs and rock n' roll. In a lots of ways very similar to the Anthony Kiedis book except Kilbey is talented and has some ability at self analysis. Kilbey is not as great a writer as he thinks he is though and the prose can be stilted. He comes across as thoroughly unlikeable although still interesting and I figure he's glossed over some the frictions with band mates and friends. My favourite passage was when The Church has Tom Verlaine on their tour bus for a few days

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Reading this book is like sitting down and having a very candid, intimate conversation with the author. Kilbey shines an unsparing light on the mistakes of his past, and gives an unapologetic assessment of his talent and his art. There are lots of insider stories of the music industry of course, and both Australian and international musicians. So if you're looking for sex, drugs and rock and roll, you'll find it. But I especially enjoyed reading about Kilbey's childhood and teenage years, and how those experiences — paired with a sensitive way of seeing the world and an obsession with music — created such an original and brilliant body of work. I also enjoyed reading about the music he was listening to during his formative years - it's like taking a peek at the reading list of a favourite author.

My only complaint about this book is that the story ended with the end of the heroin years. That made sense from a narrative perspective - the tale comes full circle and leaves us with hints of a brighter future. But I would have also enjoyed reading about Kilbey's years in America, his move back to Australia, and the albums and collaborations that came next. I hope an even more peculiar Part 2 is on the way!

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read a few music autobiographies over the years; Keith Richards’ Life (2010), and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles (2004) come to mind, but the gold standard in this genre has to be Julian Cope’s Head On (1994), in which Cope’s rather eccentric and intense personality created a wildly hilarious ride into the outer realms of rock stardom. Appropriately The Church’s Steve Kilbey is name-checked in Cope’s book, appearing back stage during The Teardrop Explodes Australian tour to offer Cope a solitary magic mushroom, causing the initially skeptical Cope to “levitate above the audience”. This anecdotal link between Cope and Kilbey is significant because both share a predilection toward exploring the frontiers of psychedelic music, and now Kilbey has joined Cope in the ranks of rock stars who have given voice to their own stories.

Just what is the allure of reading about rock musicians lives? Is it because they appear so god-like in the fan’s mind? They can be so readily placed onto pedestals by the impact of their music, powerful multimedia and apocryphal myths that circulate endlessly. Rock star autobiographies offer a glimpse at the human aspect behind the god-like archetype; it’s like being able to find out what was going through Apollo’s (the god of music and the arts, appropriately) mind during his pursuit of Daphne. An interesting idea perhaps, but also a nice segue to Something Quite Peculiar, in which we learn that at a young age Kilbey became obsessed with Greek mythology. Kilbey fortunately begins Something Quite Peculiar with his childhood, even though Greg Dulli bluntly advised Kilbey not to “...write about your fucking childhood, no one want to read that!” Just as well such sage advice was ignored because it is both refreshing and relatable to read about an Australian childhood. It’s also fascinating to learn what influences were brought to bear on the young Kilbey. There’s his music loving father, but also the rough and tumble world of Australian rules football umpiring (who’d have guessed!), school bullies, tragic teenage love and, of course, music.

All through Something Quite Peculiar music is the strand that holds everything together. The young Kilbey loved The Beatles and The Rolling Stones of course, but also intriguingly Chicago, Leon Russell and Jo Cocker. Then later came 70‘s greats such as T.Rex, Bowie and Brian Eno. Essentially a book about Kilbey is also a book about The Church. As a teenager in the 1980’s The Church played exactly the kind of music I wanted to hear. The band seemed so fully formed and perfect that it never even occurred to me to wonder about how it all happened. Fittingly the sequence of events that led to The Church’s formation reads like serendipity in action. When Kilbey’s Canberra band, Baby Grande, has to share a double-booked rehearsal space Kilbey meets brilliant guitarist Peter Koppes. When playing as a three piece Marty Wilson Piper comes back stage after a gig and Kilbey asks him to join the band before even establishing if he plays an instrument! Kilbey’s intuition was correct and Wilson-Piper became the perfect second guitarist for The Church. After ridding themselves of bullying drummer Nick Ward they let a smart-ass teenager with no drum kit calling himself President Camembert try out for the band. Any band that wants to come close to greatness needs an amazing drummer and the one and only Richard Ploog definitely had that special spark (plus the best surname for a drummer ever.)

For Church/Kilbey fans Something Quite Peculiar makes for addictive reading. There’s a plethora of great anecdotes and observations, tales of band ructions and the frustration of dealing with the unforgiving music industry (Capitol Records were “...fuck-knuckles to a man” apparently). Kilbey writes like a songwriter, with an emphasis on pacing and structure. There’s even the literary equivalent of a middle eight, with a prose poem detailing his experiences touring with The Church in Europe right in the middle of the book. The second half speeds up (life speeds up, don’t you know...) to match the weird intense energy of being in a band that’s making it, being on the road endlessly and dealing with intensely obsessed fans. The chapter about the making of Starfish in L.A. is a cracker, with Kilbey’s wit and humour coming to the fore. Kilbey perfectly conveys how you can be fulfilling your dream whilst at the same time having to deal with the terrible bullshit that comes with it.

The Church’s initial history is a slow burn to significant international success, then followed by the inevitable comedown. Post Starfish makes for sobering reading, with members leaving (Koppes came back though) and Kilbey succumbing to heroin addiction; but typically there was also some great music made during this period as well. Something Quite Peculiar ends with Kilbey finally kicking the habit a decade later and then there is a ten year jump to The Church playing the Sydney Opera House in 2011. Some have been disappointed with the jump in time, but as all good artists know what you leave out is just as important as what you leave in (there are, however, some unanswered questions*) and does the reader really need to know everything anyway? In any case all you need to know is that Kilbey and The Church kept on going all through those years, making great music, playing fantastic live shows and proving to have more endurance than pretty much every Australian band that emerged in the 1980’s.

Something Quite Peculiar is essential reading both for Church fans who can’t get songs like Violet Town out of their heads (that’s me) and also for the more casual fan who might only be familiar with the Starfish era. As far as rock star autobiographies go it’s engaging, well written and funny as hell. If this book came out in the 1980’s then people would be calling Kilbey a ‘survivor’, something I’m sure he’d dislike. What you can say is that Kilbey, and The Church, are an example of great artistic tenacity to keep doing what you love irrespective of trends and opinion, and that is something to be admired.

*
Do the surviving members of INXS still want to beat up Kilbey?
Did Ploog get into catering post Church and is he still a situationist?
Does Tom Verlaine still get around in just socks?
What happened to the chewing gum?

[PRJ Greenwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally interesting book that mostly details Kilbey's life in detail till around the Sometime/Anywhere period. After that, we get a very brief precis of everything since. We're four-fifths through this book at the time Starfish is released in 86/87. Everything else is condensed, even his ten-year addiction to heroin is given synopsis treatment, when it should've been centre stage.

In saying so, it was a revelation to me re: Nick Ward and Richard Ploog and what happened with them, especially the former, whom Kilbey paints as a very nasty piece of work.

Yet, I don't feel I know anything more about Steve now then before reading. His trials, travails and successes are largely predictable in their narrative. I know he can come across as arrogant and condescending, even if it couched in a wry self-acknowledgement.

And then there's the writing itself. He certainly saves his best prose work for his lyrics, as his writing style comes across as folksy and sometimes dry, even if he's intending otherwise. As a songwriter he's awesome, as a storyteller, he's only just there.

Definitely a three out of five effort.

[Benjamin Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant biography. Steve Kilbey writes his story in a very entertaining and witty way. I was not that familiar with much of the church's (Steve's band) music prior to reading this book but after reading this i went out and purchased a few records. My only bit of criticism was that he didn't spend enough time on the latter half of his career but Steve didn't have the most pleasant time then so I can overlook that, also to go into more detail may have come across as glorifying his naughty behavior and also very painful for Mr Kilbey to write also. All in all this book is very well written and as i wrote earlier very entertaining and witty. Even if your not a fan of his music i would highly recommend this book to anyone. Five very well deserved stars 😊

[Hazel Bright · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is its wry humor. The author's astonishingly detailed reminiscences, mildly interesting as they are, seem superficial at best, and like a masking technique at worst. Having survived a trip across the frightening terrain of stardom, then addiction and death, the author draws few conclusions or lessons that he wishes to share, but instead provides a laundry list of events. Whether this is because he has never done much deep introspection or because he wants to keep things light in this autobiography is difficult to discern, but I suspect it is largely the former.

[Brigid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kilbey's way with words extends to memoir but although I found a great deal of this book engaging and Kilbey's voice cheeky and charming, I don't think he really opened up a great deal on certain topics. For mine, if you're going to write a memoir, it means committing to sharing your deepest thoughts on events and issues. I think Kilbey's has a lot more he could reward readers and himself with sharing, but there's time for another go when ALL the hairs fine grey ;)

[Alessandro Brioschi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kilbey has an obvious talent for writing and I was surprised to see him as comfortable with prose as he is with poetry. This is an extremely generous autobiography, providing us with a wealth of detail on Kilbey's life and times inside and out of the Church in their heyday. The latter chapters are a bit faster and less detailed, but offer an incredibly striking and well written chronicle on opiate addiction. Fans of The Church need to read this.

[Pete Bratach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good journey into Kilbey's mind. He's very forthcoming about his drug problem, and how it affected his personal life and career. What I want to know though is what the other band members think, especially Marty, since Kilbey doesn't seem like he was ever impressed with Marty's guitar chops. I wonder how it happened that those two stuck together for Sometime Anywhere.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breezy and entertaining, and somewhat perversely made me want to hear some of both Kilbey's deep and recent catalogue. He adopts a sadder/wiser pose that leaves his sometimes wearying arrogance intact and the implications of a long history of womanizing unexamined.

[Hamish Bredin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable as a church fan. I’ve long appreciated them & this only deepened that slightly. The backbone of honestly throughout is very apparent & nicely mixed in with plenty of amusing stories & anecdotes. My only downer was a lack of insight into any church music from about 1994-2014!

[Andrew Grenfell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devoured it. About as down to earth as The Church's music is ethereal.

[R S · Rating 1 out of 5]

An explanation for why The Church’s died

Yet another disgusting druggie musician who repented. How banal.

I wish someone had stopped me from buying this awful book.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even if you're not a hardcore fan of The Church/Steve Kilbey, this is a great insight into the 80s Australian music scene. Beautifully written in Kilbey's poetic prose.

[Liane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book. Steve is a very talented writer. I found it hard to put his book down. I'd love to read more Steve!

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a Church / Steve Kilbey fan, this was not the book i was expecting to read. I guess Marty said it best when the Church were inducted into the hall of fame (PARAPHRASE) 'we spent the past 30 years being mysterious and aloof and Steve just destroyed it all in a 5 minute speech' ....

... so give Steve a 273 page book to fill and you can't imagine what he fills it with... Laziness, Cowardness, Vanity, Humour, Love, and a fragile honest beauty rarely seen, but it's not just a book about Rock Stars and Fame.., it's also a book about a disappearing time, about a young English boy growing-up in this strange, beautiful, wonderland called Australia. (I suspect the single-sound cicadas of summer taught Steve something about those infectious Monotones he trademarked) yet it shocked me how Australian Steve Kilbey really is, I wasn't expecting the amount of slang he used in the book, and he does a good and an important job at documenting 1960's Fashion, Music, Culture, and The Catholic Devide (almost Historian-Like)

He talks about this Little-Drummer-Boy bully that played in his band (and you cant help but feel so sorry for Steve and Marty) and you wonder why this Bully wasn't won over by Steve's Intelect and Talent, but the stupid bully conspires with The Church Road Manager to kick Steve out of his own band.

I always viewed Steve as a Mirage in the distance, the closer you got to him the more he would fade, unreachable and undefinable, an Enigma wrapped inside a Confusing Contradictive Mass of Despondency, but he Dismembers his own Myth in this book, Exposing himself like a Cross-Exammined Witness Under-Oath On-The-Stand.

This book is a good read, full of disapointment, tragedy, sadness, achievment, humour and love, and it briefly talks about Steve's awareness of Gentilism, Catholicism and Circumcision. It is said "you should never judge a book by its Cover" but i say "you should always judge this book by its Title", because it is SOMETHING QUITE PERCULIAR.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kilbey's autobiography is a swift, eminently enjoyable read, interspersed with humorous anecdotes, a great picture of Steve's childhood and adolescence, and some intriguing insights into the Church's first decade or so. Then suddenly the last 20 years of the man and band are compressed into 30 pages mostly focused on Kilbey's tragic, decade-long descent into heroin addiction and downward career/life trajectory. The end of the last chapter and outro tie up his recovery and return to stability and contentment in such a compact few pages that it almost feels unfinished. Somewhat frustratingly (for me as a fan), the last Church album even mentioned - with next to no elaboration - is 1994's Sometime Anywhere, and the subsequent 7-10 releases (depending on how you're counting) don't feature at all. One has to wonder if the quick skimming through two decades of music and, yes, also addiction and regret is due more to a publishing deadline or simply the author's unwillingness to revisit the specific details of a musical career amidst such a decline. It's doubly odd to consider that post-addiction releases like Forget Yourself, Uninvited Like the Clouds, and the extremely well-received Untitled #23 wouldn't merit at least some discussion, especially since they basically reestablished Kilbey's and the Church's standing both among critics and the wider public (even if not the mainstream).

Ultimately, the book's generally a pleasure and well worth reading, but it's hard to not feel a little disappointed that Steve didn't pad it out with another chapter or two.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

The good: Steve Kilby spins a good yarn, and the tone of Something Quite Peculiar is funny and engaging. There's a lot about Steve's early childhood, and you really get a sense of what Australia was like in the 1960s/70s. The material on the formation and early days of The Church is really interesting.
The bad: The book is 271 pages long, and on page 226 the band have just finished making Starfish, their most commercially successful album, and parent to Under the Milky Way. That album came out in 1988. The last album to actually mentioned by name is 1994's Sometime Anywhere, meaning that there's practically nothing about the career of The Church over the last 20 years (in which time they've released some very fine albums, particularly After Everything Now This and Untitled #23). In his defense, Kilby admits that his decade-long heroin addiction (basically, the 1990s) was difficult to write about, such was his self-loathing for the person he became. But the post-smack years only take up a precious few pages at the end of the otherwise excellent biography. In many ways I wish he's just stopped 2/3rd of the way through, and then left the latter half of the band's career from a second volume.

[Aug Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable read. Told in a conversational manner that at first it seems like he hasn't edited and afterthoughts are entering beyond where they should've slotted in. But then you realise that even if it was written this way and left untouched, it really works to tell the story. Was great to learn Mr. Kilbey's thoughts on his own work - there's SO MUCH of it! And from the sound of things, much more than the considerable output that's been released. It seems he was always - and that does mean At All Times - writing, recording, and playing songs. Interesting to learn of his disappointment with the production of 'Seance', which indeed does feature killer material. Oh what might have been had he been able to pursue his sonic vision for it. His thoughts cause one to listen again to the impressive 'The Blurred Crusade' on which he did achieve that ideal, and to 'Heyday' which came close (in his opinion) and of course has many wonderful pop songs. The inner band tensions are revealed with retrospective acceptance while still conveying his emotions behind them. And the whole thing told with humour and an awareness that other people have wildly different accounts of the events within. Highly recommended. Highly recommended.

[Jim Dunedin · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Something Quite Peculiar: The Church. The Music. The Mayhem’, Steve Kilbey. Aussie rock has a reputation for the hard-rocking pub rock and stadium traditions led by AC/DC and others. Running under and below that is a rich vein of artistic literate rock, think: the Triffids, Nick Cave, the Go Betweens, and the Church. Until recently holding down a reasonably stable line-up over decades they have produced some of the finest psychedelic guitar rock sounds about, as well as the timeless Starfish album. Behind it has been bassist, singer and songwriter Kilbey. Surely the only songwriter to marry the words ‘opulence’ and ‘arrogance’ into a rhyming couplet lyric (Almost With You). He writes and recounts well, from their slow start in the trenches, minor breaks in the States and then gold dust with an international hit (Under the Milky Way). He has intelligence, wit, a certain sarcastic bite, and in middle age, the wisdom to see through some of his youthful folly. From my Medium review:
https://medium.com/music-voices/the-r...

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will likely only interest you if you know who this person is. I found it to be a fascinating insight into how SK became the person that he is today, and how the band "The Church" evolved.

And then I was pretty devastated to learn that the members of the band are essentially not friends at all, and that the band existed just as an entity in itself.

I don't know if that's still true today. However, they are still recording and touring, albeit with some new member's.

[Jp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very entertaining. A natural writer, he is as amusing and involving to read as he was when I've heard him speak. Came to a rather jarring end though after the Priest=Aura era, skipping many of the later Church albums altogether, although his painful recollection of the heroin years is quite moving. Required reading for the dedicated Church fan, very funny and revealing account of a somewhat enigmatic figure, even though the end disappoints.

[David Bradsher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exciting to read about my musical hero genius, and my favorite band for the last 27 years. Brutally honest, I can't say I'm disappointed at all of the negative things that happened in this man's life, I appreciate the honesty and I'm sure it wasn't easy to document and expose everything. A man that stands by his art and creativity, and a band that continues to evolve and produce original and inspiring work to this day.