Pop Music Reviews : Kilbey Takes on T. Rex in Solo Acoustic Show

“I hate to see something like that beat me,” said the Church’s lead singer and songwriter Steve Kilbey, just before he gave up trying to remember the start of an old T. Rex song during his solo acoustic performance on Sunday at Club Lingerie. It was just one of many little gaffes (forgotten words and chords, etc.) in the 80-minute set, but it was just the perfect sort of thing for an easygoing evening in the club’s new, relaxed Sunday acoustic format (tables on the dance floor and everything!).

Kilbey pretty much played whatever he or the audience wanted--he managed that T. Rex song later and did two others as well--and to heck with the formalities. Throughout, the puckish Aussie was charming and disarming, in contrast to his band-mate Marty Willson-Piper, who was often pensive and melancholy in his recent solo show at Bogart’s Bohemian Cafe.

Not that Kilbey doesn’t offer his share of melancholy. As a songwriter, it’s his stock-in-trade. But there’s a gauzy wistfulness to his style and voice that translated quite well to the acoustic context, where he drew on the Church repertoire and selections from his solo albums, as well as the T. Rex numbers and a gorgeously sad version of Lou Reed’s “Caroline Says.”