How a certain combination of chords, words and melody can either make you “a million bucks” or leave you to “languish in a garage forever.” 

The 63-year-old came to the conclusion that the secret was ambiguity. It’s certainly true for his band The Church’s most beloved classic, Under The Milky Way. The elegiac song, co-written with Kilbey’s ex-partner Karin Jansson, has no decipherable meaning.  

“If you could write a song that was ambiguous, then people could inhabit [it] themselves and that’s what Milky Way was, it was the epitome of ambiguity,” Kilbey says on the balcony of the Herald’s Honeysuckle office.

“It’s a song that doesn’t really say very much, it just sets up an atmosphere and the listener can make whatever they want out of it.”

Under The Milky Way formed the centrepiece of The Church’s most commercially-successful album, 1988’s Starfish, which also features beloved tracks like Reptile and North, South, East and West. To celebrate the record’s 30-year anniversary the psychedelic four-piece are performing the album in its entirety.

You get the sense a nostalgia tour is something The Church would previously have scoffed at. Since their 1981 debut Of Skins and Hearts the band, unlike many of their contemporaries, have continued to release quality new material.

The arrival of former Powderfinger guitarist Ian Haug in the line-up has continued that trend with the impressive Further/Deeper (2014) and Man Woman Life Death Infinity (2017) albums.

“We hate the nostalgia,” Kilbey says. “It is very lucrative and sometimes I have to do the nostalgia thing to make money, but we really hate it.

“I don’t see why a rock band can’t keep on having new music right til the end, but some bands say that’s it, we’re just going to go around forever doing this.”

However, nostalgia doesn’t necessarily need to be a dirty word, especially when celebrating an album like Starfish.

Following the cult success of their 1985 album Heyday, The Church’s label Arista sent the band to Los Angeles to record with famed session men Greg Ladanyi (Jackson Browne, Don Henley) and Waddy Wachtel (Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks) with the goal of breaking into the US market.  

“There was a lot of tension in making it, which I found amusing,” Kilbey recalls. “It was this clash of coked-up LA session guys meeting these stoned-out Sydney musicians.

“When the single [Under The Milky Way] came out and the album was a success they kind of changed their tune, but while we were doing it I think they thought it was a waste of their f—king time. Like, ‘why should we be doing this with these unknown guys’?

“It was just something they squeezed in between Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt.”

The Church bring their Starfish tour to Wests NEX on November 24.