There’s a neat symmetry to this one that feels almost too perfect to script. In the early ’80s, a teenage Martin Kennedy stood in a dusty field watching Steve Kilbey and his band carve out something strange and luminous at a hippie festival. He taped the set on a Walkman. That moment stuck. Forty-five years later, it’s come full circle with the announcement of ‘Things We Did On Earth’, the ninth studio album from Kilbey Kennedy, set for release on 15 May 2026 via Foghorn Records.
The long-running collaboration between Kilbey (of The Church) and Martin Kennedy (All India Radio) continues to operate in its own orbit. The process remains as loose and instinctive as ever: Kennedy builds the sonic bed, Kilbey arrives with words and melody, and the pair let the songs take shape without friction. No grand concept, no laboured construction—just the quiet accumulation of atmosphere and intent.
According to the duo, ‘Things We Did On Earth’ leans into the themes that have come to define their work—mortality, dream states and the pull of other worlds—while maintaining that blurred line between ambient drift, psychedelia and something more experimental. It’s a space they’ve been refining since their first collaboration in 2009, and, as noted in previous Backseat Mafia reviews, one they seem increasingly comfortable inhabiting without compromise or distraction.
There’s also a familiar note of finality—this could be their last album, we’re told. Then again, they’ve been saying that for years, and the sense persists that Kilbey and Kennedy will keep returning to this shared headspace as long as the signal holds.
The album’s eleven tracks—among them ‘Reverie’, ‘Dysphoria’, ‘The Dryad’ and ‘The Formless Realms’—suggest another immersive listen, less about individual songs and more about the mood they collectively conjure. Sonically, it continues to echo touchstones like David Bowie and David Byrne, but filtered through that distinctly Kilbey/Kennedy lens: introspective, expansive and just a little untethered.
‘Things We Did On Earth’ arrives 15 May—another dispatch from a collaboration that has quietly become one of the more enduring and singular projects in Australian alternative music.
You can pre-order here or through the link below.
