Released in 1988, an album that to this day is either the best or worst album they ever did, depending who you ask. When lead single ‘Under The Milky Way’ (complete with Synclavier sampled backwards bagpipes) cracked the top 40 in the States, The Church briefly found themselves occupying the same lofty stratosphere as U2 and REM. The problem for hardcore fans were these indie darlings were Australia’s seminal underground band and this album came on the back of the Rickenbacker laden ‘Heydey’, which contained two of the band’s most definitive songs: ‘Tantalized’ and ‘Columbus’. In the minds of many fans, moving to Los Angeles and signing to a major label, Arista (Whitney Houston was their other major signing that year), as well as teaming up with Don Henely’s producer, Greg Ladanyi was simply sacrilege. But in a band that famously struggled to find common ground with their personal record collections (Kilbey liked Marc Bolan, the others liked Deep Purple), it was Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’ that would inspire the production values and direction of ‘Starfish’ (the influence is best heard on the precise and minimalistic ‘Blood Money’). In Australia, the band would sign with Mushroom Records founder, Michael Gudinski who went all out promoting the single ‘Reptile’, releasing it on green vinyl and including a toy snake with every copy. To regain credibility, Kilbey, following on from this mainstream success, developed a serious heroin addiction after the album charted.
The first two singles from ‘Starfish’ (‘Under The Milky Way’ and ‘Reptile’) would later be featured on the number one rating cop show, ‘Miami Vice’, an irony not lost on Kilbey who routinely takes the piss out of his ‘American’ hit in his solo shows. On one occasion ‘Under The Milky Way’ morphed into Bob Seger’s ‘Hollywood Nights’. The band themselves were very uncomfortable in the Hollywood setting, the song ‘North, South, East and West’ captures the hollowness of the experience. The fact Linda Rondstant, Neil Diamond and members of Toto hung out during the sessions, only added to the surrealness. The band known for self indulgent jamming and multi-layered psycadellic soundscapes struggled in this disciplined environment. Kilbey himself frequently did not attend sessions, leaving all the work to the production team, which was problematic as the arrogant Ladanyi would head to the golf course every time the band challenged his arrogance, which was pretty much constantly.
Nevertheless, it’s the simpler slower atmospheric songs like ‘Lost’ and the beautiful closing track ‘Hotel Womb’ that to this day are featured in live sets and remain fan favorites. Triple J listeners voted ‘Starfish’ as one of the top 100 Australian albums of all time in the 2011 poll and while no one is saying the album is a masterpiece, songs like the other less successful singles, ‘Destination’ (complete with motorbike roar) and the post punk Jam sounding ‘Spark’ (where Marty Wilson-Piper sings lead) flesh out a significant, but flawed album that, like the band itself, never quiet reached its obvious potential.
