Kelly Country

Rolling Stone (Aus), July 1994 - #498
by Shaun Carney

Paul Kelly returns home with a new album : Wanted Man

Washing. Garbage. When you are as peripatetic as Paul Kelly, these things really count in your life. Just back from a two-month stint in the United States, Kelly is in Melbourne for just a few days before heading to his hometown of Adelaide where his wife, Kaarin Fairfax, is appearing in a play. After two months in Adelaide, they are due to return to Melbourne, from where Kelly will launch into a tour of Australia.

Kept track? It's okay if you haven't because in some respects Kelly's own career has struggled to keep the pace during the past couple of years. His new record, Wanted Man, is his first album of new material since he took the crucial step of breaking from his long-standing backing band-cum-collaborators the Messengers in 1991.

In that time, Kelly has spread himself pretty thin, diversifying into writing for and performing in the theatre (the play about racism, Funeral and Circuses), and he's worked as a producer for Renee Geyer, and for Vika and Linda Bull. Last year, Angus and Robertson published an anthology of his lyrics. A few months ago, he even crooned - well, not quite crooned, because anybody who has ever heard Kelly sing knows that crooning is definitely not possible - a version of Sinatra's "All the Way" on Kate Ceberano's television show.

So he's back kicking around briefly in Melbourne. The washing machine is doing a monster load of laundry in an adjacent wash-room, grinding and churning away, and providing the soundtrack for a returning traveller. And when Kelly grabs from the fridge a bottle of Cooper's Ale (being a South Australian, he doesn't ask if you want a beer, he asks: "Dyew wanta Kewpers?"), he's still disorientated and starts searching around the kitchen for a rubbish bin in which he can dispose of the ring-pull top.

It's 15 years since Kelly started making records. Fifteen years since he appeared on Countdown and jigged away as he sand about how he wanted to be like Billy Baxter. From the mid-1980's, he assumed the status of being the most lauded and respected of Australia's popular songwriters. Since that time, sales of his albums have been relatively handsome, the critical notices predominantly favourable, to say the least.

In some respects, Kelly has become a bit of an untouchable. For a fellow who doesn't necessarily sing like a natural vocalist, and whose lyrical oeuvre for a long time has been intensely personal and mostly focused on sexual politics, he attracts very little adverse media comment.

Perhaps it's because he is such an unassuming human being. At 39, and with the curly black hair very thin on top, he is a recognisable face in the street. His way of dealing with scrutiny and attention is measure out the bits of himself that he wants to share. In the space of a single interview, his approach can range from generosity to parsimony. But it is impossible to even contemplate slagging off someone who refuses to make a goose of himself.

On Wanted Man, there's a strong sense that Kelly is - lyrically - working within familiar territory. There are songs of devoted love, of wild physical relationships, of domestic trouble. He sees the things that concern him as being universal and constant. "I don't think they've changed at all. I think they just get harder to write [laughs]. I've tended to write about the same things over and over again: Family, sex - someone else would probably list more. For me, it doesn't change as I get older, like writing songs about an older person, because I was writing about older people when I was much younger. I still move back and forth in time. I'm sure it's changed as I've got older but other people can see it better than I can." And as for finding that songwriting might actually be getting easier, he says composing "still comes pretty slow".

Wanted Man finds Kelly spreading his songs across a wide range of styles - country, reggae, ballads, R&B, even the near-AOR sound of the first single, "Song from the Sixteenth Floor". "It's been recorded over a year in a few short, sharp bursts. There are two reasons why it sounds diverse, I'm not with one band. Different songs were done with different groups of people," he says. "And also I've been doing lots of different types of songwriting since I broke up with the Messengers. When they split up in 1991, I went straight into a project where I was writing for the theatre, for the Adelaide Festival. And a range of people have asked me to write songs for them, so doing those sort of things loosens you up a bit. As a songwriter, I'm always trying to write different types of songs anyway. I'm not a great stylist in any way.

"I don't have a particular style and if I have any strength it's being able to write in different styles. It's a bit of a tightrope act: You have your own sound, you develop it , and there's a time where you have to start breaking away from it. I'm not that in control of things when I'm recording. Part of recording is just being open to what people come up with. I wanted to keep things simple. Again, it wasn't very considered, this record. It wasn't very laboured."

Kelly has taken some care to top and tail the new album with his two favourite tracks. Wanted Man's opening cut is "Summer Rain", a percussion-free, waltz-tempo ballad that features David Bridie on piano and Helen Mountford on cello. Kelly's lyrical conceit is uncomplicated and probably points to his present state of mind; he welcomes his loved one as he would a summer shower ("When she comes I smile again/She cools my brain like summer rain"). The closer is "Nukkanya", a piece of classic Paul Kelly jaunty pop-folk in which Archie Roach provides guest vocals.

Also included are several established songs from his repertoire, "We Started a Fire" and "Still Picking the Same Sore". The latter sond finds Kelly rebuking two individuals for being unable to resolve their differences. "Someone said it in conversation and they were talking about two people who I don't even know. They said these people were picking at the same sore: A couple who kept breaking up and getting together. I don't know the whole story. Some people have said they think it's an awful title for a song byt it seemed such a good image, I couldn't resist."

Inevitably, in a piece on Paul Kelly, two things must be confronted: His reticence and the state of his voice. The following passage deals with both.

Rolling Stone: You've done some new things vocally on the album. On "She's Rare" there's growling and stuff.

Paul Kelly: Yeah, and falsetto [Pause. Kelly grins] Yeah.

RS: In the past, you've talked about the development of your singing and there have been quotes from your mother saying you've only just come good as a vocalist in the last couple of years. Is this a view you share?

PK: Yeah. I think I'm a better singer than I was a couple of years ago. And, with a bit of luck, I'll be a better singer in a couple of years time. It's just that if you do somethin a lot, you do get better at it. Waht singing needs is very work-intensive. The voice gets more flexible, stronger, gets a greater range. I've got a better low range than I used to have and I've got a bit more on the top too. I sing more falsetto on this record than I've done before. I've done it from time to time but that's getting stronger. When it gets as good as Ross Wilson, then I'll be happy."

America continues to be a land of fascination for Kelly. Although he has spent quite a deal of time in the United States during the past few years, he still can't bring himself to adopt the American habit of talking up his records. "Unfortunately, all I can hear when I listen to a record I've made are the mistakes. I don't find them enjoyable to listen to. Maybe in a couple of years ..."

But why America? "I first started palying guitar to early Bob Dylan and Hank Williams records. When I first listened seriously to music it was an American music: Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Lou Reed. So that's one reason. And since I firest went there in '87, I was taken with the place, still am. Another reason to go back and forth there is to make a living, because you can't necessarily rely on making a living from Australia unless you sell heaps of records. I guess I want to be in a position where I'm selling a few records in different parts of the world - maybe not a lot everywhere but it adds up."

This internationalisation of Paul Kelly, of course, calls into question the very Australian nature of a lot of his material. Does it travel well? Some fans feared that the sound of "Sixteenth Floor", released in January, showed that it didn't. And what about the very earnest efforts of a lot of rock writers and punters, especially those in the chilly, grey land of Kennett, to claim Kelly as their own? "I think it makes sense, actually. I have no problem at all, people caliming me as a Melbourne songwriter. I would say the same. I write from a specific place and I come from a certain place and that would affect the way I write. I think it makes perfect sense to take those songs to other places. I've always thought Australian bands do better overseas by being themselves."

He certainly does betray certain southern Australian characteristics. He follows the AFL when he's overseas, arranging for the results to be faxed over. And while he's an Adelaide Crows supporter, he's a sensitive one who anguishes over ebing in a one-team town. "I've been there before and it's enought to put you off." But as far as Kelly is concerned, game plans apply only to people such as Adelaide footballer Tony Modra, not to him. "I don't really have a big picture. I'd like to do another record pretty quickly after this one. I just want to get back to my own thing. I expect that in the next couple of years there'll be a fair bit of travelling, so I'm prepared for that. I've been off on tangents, which is good because it feeds back on the main thing. But my main thing is writing songs."