The word legendary gets bandied about a lot, but in the case of Australian singer-songwriter, Paul Kelly, it’s well-earned. To commemorate turning 70 – nope, we couldn’t believe it either – he’s released an album that shows there’s plenty of bite in the old fella yet. ‘SEVENTY’ is out this Friday, the 7th of November.
When you’ve been doing the same job for 45 years, you either become complacent or a respected expert in the field. Thankfully for Paul Kelly it’s the latter. With 13 new songs, ‘SEVENTY’ is a welcome follow up to last year’s ‘Fever Longing Still’, and shows there’s still plenty of life in the old dog yet, and we’re left looking forward to what he’s still got to come.
‘SEVENTY’ comes off the back of a phenomenal sold out arena tour of Australia and New Zealand, and sees Kelly collaborate with artists such as Meg Washington on ‘Don’t Give Up On Me’, and Rebecca Barnard on ‘Made For Me’. He’s lost nothing of his snarling, astute looks at Australian life, while perhaps contemplating things we might consider more readily as we age and start realising we’re not actually immortal. ‘The Body Keeps The Score’, for example, looks at how trauma affects us. Speaking of the track, Kelly said,
“On a road trip, years ago, from Mullumbimby to Melbourne, I listened to the audiobook ‘The Body Keeps The Score’ by Bessel van der Kolk”, Kelly explains “It’s an investigation into the complex effects of trauma, how it can become buried in our bodies. How it can surface unexpectedly and cause harm not only to the person who experienced the trauma but to those who love them. I carried the title with me ever since that drive until one day last year at Bill Miller’s place, playing around with a tune, the words started rolling out”.
‘Rita Wrote A Letter’, the second track on the album, is a continuation of the story started way back in 1987 with ‘To Her Door’, followed by 1995’s ‘Love Never Runs On Time’, and then 1996’s instant classic and much loved Christmas single, ‘How To Make Gravy‘. The protagonist on being released from prison, has received a letter from his wife, Rita, saying there’s no point in coming back, as she’s moved on. The news cut him to the core, and so he decided to end it all. Will death mean the end of this story? Given he’s speaking from the grave, “Six feet down and under the clay”, it certainly seems there’s room to tell more.
“I’ve been mulling over the idea of a sequel to ‘How To Make Gravy’ from Rita’s point of view for quite some time”, Kelly explains. “About five years ago I wrote down the words, ‘Rita wrote a letter,’ and thought, ‘There’s my title’. I scratched away intermittently and fruitlessly for several years but never got very far until Dan Kelly sent me a recording of something he’d written on piano with a rough melody over the top. The words started rolling after that. As often happens, they took me by surprise. You could say the song took a dark turn but to my mind it’s a black comedy. A ghost story. You hear Rita’s voice loud and clear, but Joe talks even more. I couldn’t shut him up!”
‘I Keep Coming Back For More’ sees Kelly at his most Dylanesque – not just in timbre, but lyrically and musically – as he sings of needing someone like a drug; he keeps coming back for more, despite knowing that it’s not the wisest move.
This is followed by ‘Take It Easy’, an “Australiana” (to coin a genre) song, that gives equal weight to the guitar and other instrumentals as to Kelly’s vocals. He sings of Cicero, the Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who was put to death on the instructions of Marc Antony, because he wrote the ‘Philippics’ against Antony. Cicero’s hands and head were cut off and displayed on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum, and this is also referred to in the song. It’s an upbeat track for such a weighty topic, but it wouldn’t be Paul Kelly if he didn’t write about the heavy stuff.
‘Happy Birthday Ada Mae’ is a deeply touching and personal tribute to Kelly’s granddaughter, and while it’s lovely commemoration of the little girl’s second birthday, it’s not long – one line in fact – before he gets reflective, with, “Guess I’ll be gone before your twenty”. Later in the song, after praising how much she’s changed everyone around her with her laugh and her ways, he mourns the fact that his generation haven’t done more for hers; they’ve “sown the whirlwind you’ll be reaping / And eaten all the cream”. He later expresses hope that maybe he will, after all, see her turning twenty (I mean, that’s only 18 years away, and 88 isn’t too much to hope for). The song sees many of the extended Kelly family join in, with Paul’s nephew Dan playing electric guitar on this and all the other songs on the album, and also Paul’s daughter, Maddy, providing harmony vocals.
‘SEVENTY’ is an album about getting older. Even though Kelly doesn’t necessarily mention it in so many words, it’s there, right from the cover photograph, a stunning black and white portrait by photographer Dean Podmore, which pays homage to Jon Lewis’s iconic portrait of the singer from 1988 (you can see it on the back cover). Kelly hasn’t changed much in that time, not really. There’s a few more lines, perhaps, but somehow his eyes are softer and kinder. He’s seen a lot in that time, and realised what battles are worth fighting and those that aren’t. One thing’s for sure, there’s plenty of life in Paul Kelly yet.
‘SEVENTY’ is out this Friday, November 7, and can be pre-ordered here. You can find out more about Paul Kelly and his music online on his official website, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Twitter.
Watch the music video for ‘Rita Wrote A Letter’ below.
