Steve Kilbey & The Winged Heels - The Hall of Counterfeits (2021)

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).

“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.”