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.

I often bang on about the Marrickville Sound in the southern hemisphere: members of bands that basked in the spotlight in the eighties or nineties who in later years reform or create new bands that continue to create and innovate in their later years. Paul Scott is another prime example: for those who where there you might recall New Zealand band Pop Mechanix from the eighties: a brief moment in the sun around the time of the Flying Nun/Dunedin sound, often associated with The Swingers, Split Enz and playing around the inner city of Sydney (from memory).

Ass soon as the anthemic jangles begin in the opening rack 'Adrift', you know you are back in the heavenly spheres of Kilbey land: where endless melodies flourish like the greenery after a downpour in the outback desert, and epic instrumentation arcs across the night skies like meteorites. Steve Kilbey & The Winged Heels is yet another superhighway for Kilbey's inimitable and prolific songwriting skills (that include…