Review: Steve Kilbey at The Duke of George

Steve Kilbey at The Duke of George
Sunday, March 8, 2026

As patrons filed into Steve Kilbey’s sold-out Duke of George performance on Sunday night, they were greeted by a sparsely set stage. A single 12-string acoustic guitar rested in its stand, while a solitary microphone was positioned in the middle of the pulpit. There was no drum kit, no amplifiers, nor were there any additional microphones scattered around the stage—equipment that had graced Kilbey’s previous West Coast appearances across the recent past. Tonight it was just The Church’s frontman with his encyclopaedic songbook, five decades of musical misadventures, and a collection of the finest contemporary songs Australia has ever heard—along with a few it never fully opened its ears to…

Perhaps as an ode to recent West Coast visits for his collaborative Jack Frost shows with The Hoffmen, Kilbey opened his first set with the gorgeous Grant McLennan co-write Providence. In staying with the first Jack Frost album, he then threw forth a rendition of the equally sublime and heartbreakingly beautiful Civil War Lament. Due to him leading the vocalising on the album version, the song was widely presumed to be a Kilbey contribution. In tonight’s introduction, however, Kilbey confessed it was in fact a McLennan song. Despite spending years pretending it was one of his own, McLennan had in fact pulled the song out of thin air in a single feverish writing session.

A co-write with The Afghan Wings frontman, Greg Dulli, titled Traitor Signals, from Kilbey’s expansive 2018 album Sydney Rococo, was sandwiched in between a cover of Bob Dylan’s Precious Angel and T. Rex’s Summer Deep. In introducing the latter, Kilbey explained how after listening to the song over and over again in his youth, he tried to tell his father what a genius Marc Bolan was. His father replied, “The only clever thing about that bastard is he knows how to spell Tyrannosaurus.” Kilbey next tapped into a collaboration with Stephen Cummings, performing September 13, a composition he wrote and Cummings recorded on his 1994 Kilbey-produced album, Fallen Swinger. Even in this bare-bones acoustic setting, the song remains an undervalued Kilbey classic.

The Walker Brothers’ No Regrets was an inspired inclusion that perfectly foreshadowed a selection of songs from Eleven Women, a quickly written and recorded COVID album featuring eleven songs dedicated to eleven different women. After not quite managing to execute the serenely beautiful Think of You, Kilbey amusingly pointed out that when playing bass in his band, he only needs to reel off notes, whereas executing chords in these solo shows can be somewhat trickier. Kilbey rounded out his first set with an alluring deep dive into past solo work that included Wolfe from his 2008 album #Painkiller; Keeper from 2001’s Dabble; and Limbo, a hauntingly beautiful poison pen letter to a former manager, from his magnificently introspective 2001 EP Narcosis.

The Church was the focal point of Kilbey’s second set. He introduced his rendition of The Church’s first single, She Never Said, by humourously citing a review that referred to the song as a poor man’s Flowers. Kilbey then explained that a lot of songwriters claim to have written songs while on acid, but he suspected few actually have. He then proceeded to tell a story about recording Tear It All Away on his home four-track while engaging in an altered-state conversation with his cat, which was harbouring deep emotional scars inflicted by its castration. Unguarded Moment was not only accompanied by a tale of defiantly refusing to play it to a prickly audience at a 1981 show in Warrnambool during the height of the song’s radio popularity but also a gorgeous chorus of voices from tonight’s audience.

Another much-appreciated inclusion for the night was Kilbey’s rendition of the exquisite The Night Is Very Soft. The song is a co-write from The Church’s 1982 EP Sing-Songs, written with his brother Russell not long before he went on to front the sublime Sydney-based guitar-pop band The Crystal Set. It’s a magical kaleidoscope of fragmented and vivid imagery and another overlooked gem within The Church’s expansive catalogue. Almost With You was followed by Tristesse before presenting a stripped-back and slowed-down version of his band’s perennial live favourite, Tantalise. Incorporating a detour through The Ferrett’s sultry Don’t Fall in Love, the song stole the show.

Reptile and Fly were appreciated precursors to Under the Milky Way. With the audience once again in full voice, Kilbey intervened, directing the females in the audience to take the “Wish I knew what you were looking for” line from the chorus while handing over “Might have known what you would find” to the males. The result was as inflicting as it was striking. After a quick post-mortem of the night by alluding to some “unnecessary mistakes” and humbly apologising for chastising a segment of the audience for talking when it was in fact the waitstaff taking orders, Kilbey rounded off his second set with Don’t Look Back from The Blurred Crusade.

At the audience’s encouragement, Kilbey remained on stage and stretched out the evening to incorporate an additional two songs. After soliciting suggestions from the crowd, he settled upon Hotel Womb, which was then followed by Myrrh. Delivered at its ethereal and frantic best, like so many other Kilbey compositions, it left you wondering why it never rose to the popular status of songs like Under the Milky Way. Across his diverse and lauded career, Kilbey has reputedly composed over 1,500 songs. And although it was just the songwriter and his guitar that engagingly delivered tonight’s eclectic mix of pristine compositions, the same question arose after every song—why wasn’t that a hit?

BRETT LEIGH DICKS