the finest kiss

Paul Kelly at the Triple Door, Seattle | 21 March 2008

What better place to spend a Friday night, but at the Triple Door with my wife and some friends watching an Australian legend. Paul Kelly’s sojourns to the US are few and far between, which is understandable because though he is a house hold name down under, here he claims merely a devoted cult following. In his late fifties, he still writes provocative songs, and seems to push himself artistically, and he can still put on a pretty darn good gig.

Last night he appeared solo on stage in a black jacket dinner jacket and looking significantly older than the last time I saw him, which was nearly ten years ago. After two songs one of which was an old favorite I Can’t Believe We Were Married, he was joined by his nephew Dan Kelly. Dan contributed mostly electric guitar, but he also busted out a mandolin and provided some excellent harmonies and pretty falsetto on Careless. The single electric guitar accompanying Paul’s acoustic brought a sound to the show that was reminiscent to Kelly’s early albums like Post or even the very under produced (but still amazing) Gossip.

Being a long time fan, I was partial to the older songs that he plucked from his back catalog and so it seemed was the rest of the audience. During Dumb Things, his guitar flaked out and he had to quickly switch guitars mid-song, the audience took care of the lyrics for him with the entire room singing “In the middle, In the middle, In the middle of a dream, I lost my shirt I pawned my rings, I’ve done all the dumb things”. The surprise of the night for me was Don’t Harm the Messenger. He introduced the song saying, “This is an old one. When we recorded it Grant McLennan did the speaking part, tonight Dan’s gonna do it. This one’s for you GW”. Before they even started playing it I had tingles going up my spine. The minimalist rendition of the song reminded me of the version on Gossip, and Dan’s narration was just fine. Of course there were shouts for old many favorites like Bradman, Adelaide, and Darling It Hurts which Kelly politely ignored. He played a good helping of his songs from his latest Stolen Apples which has been out in Australia since last year and will get issued here next month. But old fans couldn’t really complain, since he peppered the set with songs from his entire career. He even took a break midshow to give his nephew the spotlight for one song. Dan has a career down under as a solo artist and is in the band the Alpha Males.

Paul Kelly has a rare ability to develop characters and create a story in a three minute song, painting characters with few words, yet grabbing the listener either with his economical use of language or a melody. So when he named an album after a Raymond Carver story back on 1989’s So Much Water So Close To Home he turned me on to the great American short story writer. Across the Sound in Port Angeles is where Carver called home. In his introduction to Everything’s Turning to White, Kelly noted that every time he’s in Seattle he was reminded of Carver. He ended the evening with an old favorite, To Her Door. It’s a classic Paul Kelly story song, a story of a relationship that hits the skids set to rousing chorus all done in three minutes, Carver would have approved. This of course left all of us wanting more, I guess we’ll have to wait a few more years.

mp3: Paul Kelly and the Messengers - Don’t Harm the Messenger (from Gossip)

The setlist, at least from what I can remember. The order is incorrect but these are the songs (I think).
Won’t You Come Around(?) / Just About to break / I Can’t Believe We Were Married /Don’t Harm the Messenger / You’re 39, You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine / Careless /Keep on Driving / The Foggy Fields of France / Dumb Things / The Oldest Story in the Book / Stolen Apples Taste the Sweetest / So Much Water So Close To Home / To Be Good Takes a Long Time / Please Leave Your Light on / God Told Me To / How to Make Gravy / You Broke a beautiful Thing(?)
Encore: Right Outta My Head / To Her Door

Paul Kelly is an Australian singer-song writer, very popular in his native land, but virtually unknown everywhere else. If you’ve been around a while, you may remember his minor MTV/120 Minutes hit Dumb Things. He’s been compared to the Kink’s Ray Davies, and Bruce Springsteen for his ability to write poignantly about his native Australia and Graham Parker and Elvis Costello for his sound. No one I’ve ever heard can write such concise human stories in three minute pop songs. He’s like the Raymond Carver of the pop song, so it’s no surprise he turned one of Carver’s short stories into a song. His song Everything’s Turning to White was based on the Carver short story So Much Water So Close To Home. If you saw the movie Short Cuts, it’s the story with Huey Lewis as one of the fisherman that find a dead body and decide to keep fishing.

Kelly has been around making records for quite a while, his first record Manila came out back in 1981. Throughout his career, he’s moved beyond his bar band and post punk roots and delved into the realm of sound tracks, bluegrass, and even funk. My introduction to Paul Kelly was back when Gossip came out. This was his first album to get released in the US, in Australia it was a double album with 24 songs, in the US, A&M paired it down to 17. Me being young and impressionable, this album solidified my Paul Kelly fandom for life. He went on to release three more albums with the messengers (known as the coloured girls down under) and then decided to go solo. Cut forward to today and you’ve got a living legend with a huge catalog of excellent songs. So what do you do with all of these songs in today’s digital age? Well, if you’re Paul Kelly, you record them live and make them available for download. Starting this month, you can download three of his songs that begin with the leter A, and throughout the year he’ll make it through the alphabet releasing live versions of his songs A to Z. All the tracks were recorded recently at some gigs he did in Melbourne where he performed his songs A to Z. When everything is said and done, 100 songs will be made available, if that isn’t an excellent introduction to this under appreciated artist, I don’t know what is. Right now Adelaide, After the Show and Anastacia Changes Her Mind are available. Both Adelaide and After the Show are from the excellent afore mentioned Gossip.

A few of my favorite Paul Kelly songs:

mp3: Look So Fine, Feel So Low (from Gossip)
mp3: Adelaide (from Gossip)
mp3: Little Decisions (from Hidden Things)
mp3: I Can’t Believe We Were Married (from Comedy)
mp3: How to Make Gravy (from Words and Music)
mp3: Every Fucking City (from Nothing but a Dream)

Sign up to start downloading the live songs: Right Here

…or buy some Paul Kelly cd’s: Here

It’s not every day a record label just up and calls it quits, but that’s what Australia’s Candle Records is doing. The Melbourne label was originally started back in 1994 as a way for the Simpletons to put out their records. Later the Lucksmiths, Cuddlefish and the Mabels joined the ranks. I first found out about Candle when I got the Lucksmiths, A Good Kind of Nervous. I still remember biking home from the record store with A Good Kind of Nervous tucked in my bag. It was a whole new world Australian indie. From there I went on to discover the punk/folk of the Simpletons and the mellow, warm pop of the Mabels.

Over the years the Candle newsletter in my inbox has been like a warm blanket, smothering me with the friendly pop sounds from down under. The label’s roster of exclusively Australian artists expanded over the years to include Darren Hanlon, the Guild League, and Mid-State Orange among others. I will miss the label’s friendly demeanor and quality releases. I’ve been wondering where the Lucksmiths in particular but also Darren Hanlon, Mid-State Orange and the others will go to put out their records now!?

On 31 March the Candle will close it’s doors for good, in the meantime they’re putting on some Farewell Concerts around Australia (of course). You can also order records up to then from them as well. They have cut some prices and are offering a few deals. So check it out. If you’ve been putting off ordering that old Simpletons records, now’s your chance.

Here are few mp3’s to make it hard to resist.

Simpletons - These Days

Lucksmiths - Detective Agency

Darren Hanlon - Happiness is a Chemical