erenity is where you find it ; Steve Kilbey has decided , mid-pandemic . And in his beachside home in gorgeous Sydney , Australia , it ’ s something that the spiritual-minded Church frontman has been actively seeking , from the moment he awakens every potentiallyoppressive day . First of all , he says , “ I have to be near the sea , I need to see it — I always have . I need the ocean on an almost cellular level because it ’ s so powerful that you can actually feel it in the air . So I know solace every day , no matter what ’ s happening in the outside world , because the ocean changes everything .” Ergo , during an average Down Under day — seven recent ones of which he spent spontaneously writing and recording a brand-new solo set , Eleven Women , which jangles like the best of his vigorous ‘ 80s Church work ( including their moody anthem “ Under The Milky Way ”) — the singer takes regular swims in the Pacific but prefers dogpaddling through local sea pools , extensions of coastal tidal pools that are always relaxing . And he always wears a diving mask so he can spot every alien marine visitor . “ There are so many sea pools in Sydney , and in my neighborhood alone , there are four ,” he reveals . “ They fill up and empty with the tide , and my particular pool is full of fish , octopi , birds diving in and out , and sea slugs , which are actually quite lovely creatures .” Don ’ t even get him started on the occasional jellyfish , some with stinging tentacles , like the Bluebottle , some not — eternal vigilance is the price you pay for a daring dip .

Usually , Kilbey has few spare moments . To date , he has : filed over 750 songs with APRA ( the Australasian Performing Right Association ); formed seven side projects , including Jack Frost with the late Grant

McLennan from The Go-Betweens ; been inducted in 2011 into the Australian Songwriters Hall of Fame ; penned an autobiography , poetry books and designed his own set of Tarot cards ; exhibited his paintings in several posh galleries ; and spent every Monday since the coronavirus clampdown broadcasting live home concerts via Instagram and archived on YouTube .

But he somehow found a week to squeeze in the eleven chiming femalethemed charmers that comprise the new record , including the off-kilter-chorded “ Poppy Byron ,” a John Lennon-ish “ Woman Number Nine ,” a minstrel-folksy “ Josephine ,” and the Phil Spector-thick “ Birdeen ,” an ode to a lorikeet that frequents his bird feeder . It ’ s a gossamer , earcandied affair , the perfect delightful distraction from the 24-hour right-versus-left TV news juggernaut that ’ s bearing down on America as this crucial election looms .

What does this usually-outspoken rocker think of how close humanity has come to the brink of its own extinction ? He chuckles mischievously . “ Well , don ’ t you think that when pop singers talk about stuff like this that it trivializes them ?” he asks , rhetorically . “ Don ’ t you think that people come to pop singers so that they WON ’ T talk about the end of the world ? Hoping that they will just talk about their latest guitar solo or something ?” Naturally , he ’ s not interested in discussing his latest guitar solo ….

IE : In an era when such a ridiculously low percentage of Americans even owns a passport , the input of educated , worldtraveled musicians should never be discounted . They ’ ve looked at our country from outside in and inside out and can relate the truth to us with a certain degree

of objectivity . And we should listen . STEVE KILBEY : Yes , so I can speak freely . But I just don ’ t know if anyone wants to hear me saying the same things about climate change that everyone else says . Like , what did we expect ? Look , I went and saw the new David Attenborough film the other day , and I just started crying as soon as it started , just watching the rain forest go down , and watching one orangutan find just one tree where there used to be miles of jungle . There ’ s one tree with one orangutan sitting up in it , eating the one leaf that ’ s left on the one tree . It ’ s like , What the fuck have we done ? And it also makes me feel glad that I ’ m old . I ’ m 66 , and I ’ m not going to live long enough to see it crawl to its ultimate conclusion , so I ’ m kind of glad that I ’ m opting out . I look back on my teenage years in the ‘ 60s and ‘ 70s and talk about halcyon ! It just seemed like everything was great then , and I didn ’ t even hear the word ‘ pollution ’ until the late ‘ 60s — no one was even talking about it . And , as David Attenborough said , he always imagined that the world was infinite . And now we ’ re finding out that it isn ’ t , and it ’ s really come to the end of the line , and it can ’ t renew itself anymore . And you know , the right-wing press in Sydney still denies it , saying we should still keep mining for coal and using fossil-fuel cars . They ’ re still trying to find statistics to prove that it isn ’ t happening . I watched 12 Monkeys the other day — re-watched it with someone who hadn ’ t seen it — and it totally resonated . It ’ s a great movie , and it still holds up . But one way to respond to this is something I ’ ve been banging on about for a long time — everyone has to become a vegetarian or a vegan . Yesterday . We can ’ t eat meat anymore . It ’ s finished — it ’ s not a sustainable future . But I can ’ t see

it happening . People are too fucked up . And if there ’ s still one more fish in that sea , someone ’ s going to be out there , trying to catch it .

IE : Speaking of fish — and to lighten the mood a bit — what is the strangest creature that ’ s appeared in your sea pool ? SK : Well , it was a bit of a tourist attraction for a while . But my pool had a rather large blue grouper , and this one was as big as a person . It was at the bottom of the pool , and for a while , people thought it was sick . But it was actually just lying on the bottom so all the little fish would clean it , eat whatever it had on it , all the algae and stuff . And then the pool got very used to having it , and they even printed up T-shirts saying , “ Come and see our grouper !” And then one day the bastard got out and just swam off ! But that was pretty strange , seeing that big fish in there . But he was pretty lazy . But sometimes I ’ ve swum up and down the pool , and I feel like some of the fish are escorting me . I think they ’ re bream , but they actually swim along with you because the fish get so habituated to humans that they ’ re not frightened anymore . It ’ s a really beautiful thing . It always makes me think that this is the way that life was supposed to be , where everything wasn ’ t scared of human beings because it ’ s really amazing to get in the pool and the fish don ’ t swim away — they know that they ’ re safe and protected .

IE : Besides aquatic activities , how else do you pass the time ? SK : Well , everything changed , obviously , with COVID-19 , because normally I ’ m touring . So without touring , I ’ ve been playing a lot more acoustic guitar , I ’ ve

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