Album Review: Steve Kilbey & Martin Kennedy You Are Everything

It's probably best not to get caught up in the contradictions. The often splendidly curmudgeonly Steve Kilbey, once big on downplaying his words as part of what makes The Church great. Martin Kennedy, in his mostly instrumental All India Radio band guise, only occasionally needed words at all.

On their third album together, they're both maybe a little freed of their typecast roles. While passionate and yet detached in his better known combo, Kilbey still has to leave spaces for those guitars to knit and filigree to make it what it is. Here, Kennedy makes warm beds of sounds that drift by, the singer's voice as part of the whole.

They happily reference German-period Bowie as an influence, on songs like East Side West Side that's clear – the words largely recited for their rhythm and sound as much as their content. Contrast that with the human hope of Knowing You Are In This World, where the muffled drums, drawn strings, and echoed other voices make for something of sincere beauty.

For all the flowing grace of that, there's sometimes still some brow-furrowing and tetchiness beneath the smooth surfaces. A Better Day quietly demands “Give me something to feel.../Nothing is pulling me through”. Perhaps anything might only work for a time, and then only if you let it.

This is a record of often intricate interlaced layers. Sometimes you can see where they overlap, but often it's just a liquid whole – listen as Brother Moon Sister Sun just ebbs away. It's that kind of detail that makes You Are Everything a small, yet almost perfectly formed, thing.