Website [Release date 07.11.25]

Question – how many Australian artists do you know? Not many I am thinking. There are the usual suspects, AC/DC, INXS, Midnight Oil possibly, Johnny Deisel perhaps, and Nick Cave who is really an honorary Brit. But not many others spring to mind, and don’t say Dame Edna. Is this because Australia is so isolated? Well please allow me to introduce Paul Kelly, if you haven’t heard of him already.

He is seventy this year, and is releasing his 30th album Seventy. Yes you read that right, his 30th album! He has been in the business 50 years, and has managed to amass 17 ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Award) awards for recording, and 5 APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Award) awards for songwriting. Which, having released 500 songs is not entirely surprising. The latter is given to artists who have achieved artistic excellence.

So, to the album – thirteen tracks including ‘Tell Us A Story’ part one and two. And that is Kelly’s specialty, storytelling. For a reference point, think of the storytelling of Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and Springsteen, and then transfer those stories to Australia.

Kelly has been soundtracking Australian life and culture throughout his amazing 50 year career, influencing many younger artists including Amyl And The Sniffers and The Beths, and has had his songs covered by the aforementioned Nick Cave.

He also has a big fan in Lucinda Williams who is supporting him on some Australian dates. Apparently he has just done some shows in the UK including two sold out shows in London and Manchester, so at least some people have heard of him over here. Unfortunately I was not one of those punters at the sold out shows.

This album is a reflective album of an older person, bringing in conversations between old friends sticking together in their twilight years in ‘Take It Handy’.

Songs like ‘The Body Always Keeps The Score’ and ‘I’m Not Afraid Of The Dark’ are written from a person coming to terms with his immortality. Likewise ‘Happy Birthday Ada Mae’, a song written for his two year grand daughter, celebrating her innocence and the joy that brings, whilst acknowledging he probably wont be around for her twentieth birthday. And if this sounds maudlin, in true great songwriter tradition, Kelly puts a spring in the step of the words and music.

In ‘Sailing To Byzantium’ he sets the poem of W B Yeats to a full band arrangement. This is not new for Mr Kelly, apparently he has set Shakespeare sonnets to music in ‘Seven Sonnets and A Song’.

And just to digress for a minute, on the above point, Kelly’s diversity is astounding, He has made an experimental dub album with Professor Ratbaggy, a bluegrass album with Smoke, collaborated with jazz pianist Paul Grabowsky with Please Leave Your Lights On, and even made a double Christmas album with songs in Hebrew, Te Reo Māori and Latin.

Since the 80’s Kelly has been has worked with many indigenous artists including Archie Roach and Yothu Yindi, standing by their side in their fight for justice, following on from a collaboration with Kev Carmody – From Little Things Big Things Grow about the 1966 Wave Hill strike, which will mean nothing to most non-Australians but it was about land rights of the indigenous people and a cause obviously close to his heart.

Billy Bragg has discovered the joys of Paul Kelly saying –“Paul Kelly is one the greatest observers of the human condition working in rock music, his songs articulate the pleasures and pains of his people in a manner that affirms their sense of belonging.”

And after that digression, back to the songs which include ‘Rita Wrote A Letter’, the first single from the album. This is a follow up to a song Kelly wrote 30 years ago called ‘How To Make Gravy’, about a guy in prison who is not going to spend Christmas with his family and friends, and his loved one Rita, who, we learn in ‘Rita Wrote A Letter’, found her self a new man, started a family and moved up the coast.

In ‘The Magpies’ Kelly tells a story of Tom And Elizabeth buying a farm in the outback and working hard to make it pay, all the while giving their profits to the mortgage company, while the magpies sing in the trees, throughout the years until they both pass and the farm is left unsaleable due to its location. A story of corporate greed often told from Dylan to Steve Earle, but without magpies.

A very mid 70’s Dylanesque ‘I Keep Coming Back For More’ is a love song about being treated badly but still coming back for more. And a delightful duet, featuring Rebecca Barnard, ‘Made For Me’, celebrates love in a relationship, in a clappy happy way. Paul Heaton should consider covering this.

“Telling stories is deeply human and has been since we started to become humans”, says Kelly, and what a storyteller this man is. Over his fifty years he has written stories about characters, places, and events in Australian life and culture. He really should be better known than he is, – he is performing in arenas in Australia and The Forum in London. However when his time is up I imagine he will be fully satisfied with his life’s creative output including this outstanding album Seventy.

The album features longtime musical cohorts – Peter Luscombe, Bill MacDonald, Dan Kelly, Cameron Bruce and Ash Taylor

He’s even managed to write an unflinching autobiography entitled How To Make Gravy, if you want to know more about the man. I know I do.

On a personal note to Paul Kelly, I am sorry I have never come across you man before you turned seventy, but I am going to try and make up for it by accessing your back catalogue and immersing myself in it.

If you don’t read any reviews from me in while, you know what I am doing. On the strength of this album I would recommend you do the same thing too. *****

Review by Andy Sharrocks

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