The Church’s Steve Kilbey dropped a New Year’s surprise for fans, releasing a nearly 3-hour documentary that features performances, interviews and “general horsing around” that he filmed during the short 1991 U.S. tour by Jack Frost, his group with Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens.

The Church has begun work on its 21st album, but the band is proceeding without founding guitarist Marty Willson-Piper, frontman Steve Kilbey announced this week in a statement that first suggests Willson-Piper simply can’t make the sessions for the new record, then implies he’s out of the band for good.

Steve Kilbey of The Church and The Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli — who have been writing new music together over the past year — made their live debut together Wednesday night with an intimate show in Los Angeles, where they performed selections from each other’s projects and premiered at least one new song,

It’s hardly a tour or anything, but Steve Kilbey of The Church and The Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli — who have been writing new music together over the past year — have now added a second performance together this fall, a show in San Francisco that comes two days after their sold-out Los Angeles gig.

After working on songs together off and on for the past few months, Steve Kilbey of The Church and The Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli will go public with their new collaboration this October when the duo plays a show in Los Angeles that will feature new music as well as “a wide selection of songs encompassing both of their careers.”

Fans of The Church who missed the Australian rockers’ recent “Future Past Perfect” tour — on which the band played 1988′s Starfish, 1992′s Priest=Aura and 2009’s Untitled #23 in their entireties — can now witness the group’s full performance of those record in Syndey in 2011 via a new three-disc DVD package.

The Church next week will release “Long Distance Century Buzzes and Fades,” a 23-years-in-the-making documentary of the band’s 1990 world tour in support of Gold Afternoon Fix that frontman Steve Kilbey assembled from more than 13 hours of raw footage he filmed with a then-new Super 8 camera.