I distinctly remember my introduction to The Church. While watching Miami Vice (a show that I rarely, if ever watched) a song played in the background. I mentioned to my oldest brother that the song was pretty cool. With that he left the room and returned a moment later with the LP Starfish. He said the song was on the album so we went to his room and he placed it on the record player. After one mesmerizing listen, I copied it to a cassette and lived with it playing through my Walkman for months. That song was Under The Milky Way.

At that time, the synthetic sounds of Tiffany, Skid Row, and Tone Loc filled the airways...and for a boy barely into his first year as a teenager, who thought it could get any better? ;) But Starfish opened the door to a whole new nature of music...one that allowed a soon to be angst ridden teen to a be tranported to a world whose landscape was textured, beautiful, ethereal.

Too young or dumb at the time to appreciate the cohesive structure of the album or what the hell Steve Kilbey was trying to say, Starfish struck a chord that still resonates in me today. Nearly twenty years later and a shelf devoted to Church CD's, Starfish is like the old friend that knows your life story...partly due to the fact that played as the soundtrack to it.

Enough rambling....

Just a couple of notes to add to the discussion:
I don't think that Starfish would come close to its near perfection with out the underappreciated drumming of Richard Ploog. Blood Money, NSEW, Antenna, Reptile, A New Season (my all time favorite Church offering), and Hotel Womb wouldn't have the impact without the subtle breaks and changes that Richard Ploog provided. In many respects, his drumming added as much ambience as the guitars of Kopes and Wilson-Piper. While I do feel that Tim Powles contribution to "brighter" songs like Unified Field or Easy is where he shines, I don't think he's been as successful at adding the nuances that Ploog brought to the table on more traditional Church offerings. (or perhaps this is just because I was horrified at the percussion on After Everything)

The combination of A New Season and Hotel Womb is one of the best pairings in the Church catalogue. Without these two gems, the second half of the album would have faltered. Instead, we are presented with two inspiring and evocative dreamscapes that paint a ray of light on an album that is an otherwise darker canvas.