A SONGWRITER never can tell where the next one is coming from.
Inspiration can strike from anywhere: a painting hanging on the wall, an 18th Century book of poems, or just the joys of driving around. Other songs rise up from a vocabulary that pays as much heed to old-time music and language as it does to current events and sounds. One embodies the horror of killing in the name of religion, another comes from the pages of the Old Testament.
It’s all there on Paul Kelly’s new album, Stolen Apples, which not only features a title tune based on the oldest story in the book, but is a collection as rich and rewarding, and surprising, as any in the 30-year recording career of one of the world’s greatest songwriters. While the sources for his material are varied and fascinating, what matters most with Paul Kelly is that the great songs keep coming, at a time of life when the well for many songwriters dries up and they more often trade on former glories.
Not Kelly. His creative juices are flowing as strongly as ever, fuelled by a diverse series of creative collaborations which range from bluegrass music (with The Stormwater Boys) to instrumental sounds (The Stardust Five) and film soundtracks. He also produced Cannot Buy My Soul, an extraordinary album released earlier this year, featuring the songs of Aboriginal songwriter Kev Carmody performed by the likes of Missy Higgins, Bernard Fanning and The Herd.
But Stolen Apples is Kelly’s first album under his own name since 2004’s Ways and Means, working again with a line-up which includes his nephew Dan Kelly, guitarist Dan Luscombe, drummer Peter Luscombe and bassist Bill McDonald.
“For the past 10 years I’ve been much more involved with collaborative songwriting,’’ Kelly explains. “The kind of people I’m drawn to play with are the ones where there’s the possibility of writing with them as well. I’ve played with this band on and off since 2002 and it’s a bit more of a coalition rather than an exclusive band like the Messengers. People have other projects a lot of the time.’’
Which meant Stolen Apples was recorded differently to Kelly’s usual method, which is to record the songs quickly while the iron is hot. This time the initial recording was followed by tinkering in short sessions in Kelly’s shed-turned-backyard-studio stretched out over the rest of the year.
The album’s dazzling bookends illuminate the range this allows him to cover. The opener, Feelings of Grief, shows the band at full stretch with a U2-like grandeur. The closing Please Leave Your Light On finds Kelly alone at the home piano, with mic leads stretching out to the shed, delivering a performance as naked and emotional as any in his long career.
“We could forget about the songs for a month or two then go back to them and they would spring to life again,’’ Kelly says.
The Lion and The Lamb, with its ‘60s-flavoured chorus and tasty use of organ and strings, underlines the strength of the coalition, while You’re 39, You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine shows it’s sometimes best to let a song ripen slowly. It’s a Kelly song originally recorded by Tex, Don and Charlie on their All Is Forgiven album.
“Tex sang it beautifully and we had to work to find a way to reclaim the song that didn’t just sound like an imitation of their version,’’ Kelly says. “We tried it three or four different ways and had almost given up on it until we hit on doing it as a waltz. Now my favourite line in the song is the one where Tex changed the lyric to improve on what I had written.’’
One of the album’s most powerful statements is God Told Me To, the story of a religious terrorist told in the first person. Kelly has often used Biblical imagery, and here it is at the heart of Stolen Apples and The Lion and the Lamb, while the last verse of God Told Me To is from the Book of Revelations.
“Come to think of it, Please Leave Your Light On is pretty much the story of the Prodigal Son,’’ Kelly says. “I have written a lot of songs that come straight from The Bible. I don’t believe in God but I’m interested in why so many people do.’’
The sequencing of the tracks takes inspiration from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, as does the cover art, since part of Blake’s genius is that he was a highly original printer and graphic designer as well as poet.
“I’ve gone the other way, starting the record with songs of experience moving backwards to songs of innocence like Keep On Driving and Foggy Fields of France then back to experience again for Please Leave Your Light On.’’
Kelly has a natural affinity for old-time music and the songwriting discipline and elegant phrasing of traditional forms. That is apparent on Foggy Fields of France, a song of a kind which might have been written at any time in the past 100 years, even if its chorus borrows from the E.E. Cummings poem i carry your heart with me and its treatment owes something to Sun Records in Memphis, circa 1955.
On The Ballad of Queenie and Rover Kelly once more explores the ballad form which informs a number of his finest songs. It tells the story of acclaimed Aboriginal artists Queenie McKenzie and Rover Thomas, from the Warmun community in the East Kimberley.
Kelly says: “Rover came to painting in later life and Queenie was a stock camp cook for many years before she took up painting and they both rose to prominence.
“I heard the story about how Queenie saved Rover’s life as a young man when he was kicked in the head by his horse and she sewed him up with needle and thread. When the doctor arrived he said, ‘I don’t need to do anything else, it’s been beautifully done.’ ’’
Artists with needle and thread, with a brush, with words, with a guitar. There is room for them all on Paul Kelly’s Stolen Apples.
NOEL MENGEL - MAY 2007
