foghorn records

Premonition K – Kilbey Kennedy (Foghorn Records)
I came not to praise Prog Rock but to bury it. You know, throw on a “Pink Floyd” T-shirt with a handwritten “I Hate” appended to the front of the band name, just like it’s the King’s Road in London, circa 1976.

The claws were out and the poison pen primed with ink. It was time to snarl about pomposity and pretentiousness, declare a fatwah on all hippies and kick out some serious wordplay jams . This War Against The Jive is relentless, and Emerson, Lake and Palmertruly do suck dogs’ balls.

The media release is cagey, avoiding too much specific information on Caen’s background. He’s fronted bands, played in bands (to quote the bio: "such as Mental as Anything, Dragon and Jenny Morris … played hundreds of shows … from big city stadiums to outback mining towns").

At this point the diligent, well-paid reviewer on a daily paper should do their homework and look the man up, perhaps at www.mikecaen.com.au, to find out more. But I am a lowly scrubber at the I94-Bar zine and I have a mountain of CDs to approach (some with caution) and I am going to quail, claim I don’t have the time ("I don’t have the time for this, dammit" - see what I mean?) and go along with the between-the-lines message from the screed: Don’t look at the man’s history, listen to the bloody songs.

Eleven Women - Steve Kilbey (Foghorn)

COVID’s pervasive impact forced Steve Kilbey to suspend the piecemeal process of assembling another Church album and instead make a solo record. It was done on the fly and from the ground up. 

Equipped with a loose but strong batch of songs, a modest budget delivered by PayPal from intimate online shows and willing collaborators in guitarist-bassist Gareth Koch, Roger Mason from the very borning Icehouse on keys and Barton Price (of the Models, Sardine v, Flaming Hands et al) on drums, Kilbey and His Winged Heels delivered “Eleven Women” in just three days.