Steve Kilbey and The Winged Heels Invite Listeners Into ‘The Hall of Counterfeits’

When Steve Kilbey released his fourth solo album Remindlessness in 1990, it was an exercise in rallying a mental montage of inspirations and fascinations and turning them into song. More than 30 years later, The Church frontman, along with a team of musicians dubbed The Winged Heels, has gathered a new batch of obsessions on the double album, The Hall of Counterfeits (MGM), out June 4.

“Time has enabled me to give voice to those same preoccupations—past lives, Indian and Middle Eastern music, religion, ancient history, the Beatles and the many implications of their work,” shares Kilbey.

A follow up to Kilbeys’ 2020 release Eleven Women—11 songs each focused on incomparable female subjects—and Jupiter 13, a collaborative effort with Martin Kennedy, The Hall of Counterfeits features a new selection of musicians, with The Winged Heels featuring drummer Barton Price, flamenco guitarist Gareth Koch, and Roger Mason on piano, organ, hurdy gurdy, and cello. 

“Together we have come up with this mercurial record that is surely the most important thing I have ever done anywhere anytime,” says Kilbey, who calls The Hall of Counterfeits “a new, sprawling double album, a labor of love.”  

Co-produced and engineered by Andrew Beck, The Hall of Counterfeits is an “unwieldy chaotic dense bunch of songs that we have plucked fresh out of the thin air,” says Kilbey, who has continued to tour in his native Australia and is planning to release a 26th album with The Church later this year.

“[It’s] the record I had to make before I shuffle off this mortal coil and begin again all over—some other time, some other place,” he says. “But this record is the big one, and even if I do get another 30 years down here it will be a hard one to ever top.”  

Kilbey adds, “I have never been prouder of an achievement in my life. Please, if you will, wander through The Hall of Counterfeits and take it all in.”

The Hall of Counterfeits Track List:
1. Arcadia
2. Swinging On The Moon
3. Karnak
4. Warren
5. Horizon
6. Brass Razoo
7. I’ve Been Here Before
8. Euphoric Recall
9. Angelesa
10. Amorous Plethora
11. I Wish
12. Bound In Servitude
13. Unrule
14. More Or Less
15. Tears Of Mer Ek
16. Everything For Sale
17. I Shall Not Want
18. Tantric Hammer
19. A Temple
20. Beginning Of Mercy
21. A Gone Dream
22. Love Song Yet To Be Named