What is Jupiter 13? Where is Jupiter 13? Why is Jupiter 13? All of these questions seem to drive the sixth collaboration between
the Church lead singer
Steve Kilbey and
All India Radio instrumentalist
Martin Kennedy. The follow-up to the duo's equally mind-bending 2017 production Glow and Fade, 2021's
Jupiter 13 is a concept album centering on the launch of its titular spaceship and the shadowy investigation surrounding its disappearance. The album is bookend by a theatrical prologue and epilogue featuring what sounds like snippets from a recorded conversation (some of which also appears in the title track) and which add some rather wry literary context to the overarching storyline. Nonetheless, the plot remains purposefully oblique as the duo conjure ever more esoteric images and emotions surrounding the spaceship's journey. The album brings to mind Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, with an astronaut lost somewhere in the actual cosmos, or the cosmos of his mind, flipping through the memory book of his life. As
Kilbey sings on "Rendezvous," "I gather your camera is busted now/it can't capture anymore thoughts/the nightmares come in the morning now/they can't wait any longer/1950s kitchen another cup of milky tea/alone in an enchanted isle/the supermarket closing in on me." Conceptual conceits aside,
Jupiter 13 is packed with slow-burn anthems rife with themes of isolation, romantic yearning, and paranoia. These are also lyrical songs that touch upon
Pink Floyd-esque space rock ("Circus"), '80s shoegaze balladry ("Rendezvous"), and goth psychedelia ("Aetolia"). Much of the album brings to mind
Kilbey's work with
the Church as
Kennedy frames the singer's burnished vocals in shimmering analog synths, storm-cloud guitars, and basslines that move with the lethargic density of a giant spacecraft. That all of it feels as if it could underscore an early-'80s BBC teleplay about a space expedition gone awry only adds to the album's evocative, cinematic nature. ~ Matt Collar