Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly doesn’t have a lot left to prove with the 23rd studio album of his career. While he’s never broken big outside of Australia, he’s a beloved songwriter in his own country; he’s a member of the Order of Australia and his 1987 song ‘To The Door’ was included in the APRA list of Top 30 Australian songs from 1926 to 2001. Given his relative anonymity outside of Australia, it makes sense to reference Kelly with other serious, adult song-writers like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen, but given his vast, accomplished catalogue, he has his own artistic voice and deserves to be recognised among the world’s great song-writers.
While most of his work is in the cross section between folk and rock, Kelly’s carved out a distinguished career by constantly challenging himself – dabbling in dub-reggae with Professor Ratbaggy, and playing bluegrass on 1999’s Smoke. For 2017’s Life Is Fine, Kelly sought to return to the energy of his 1980s albums with The Messengers.
Kelly also took piano lessons, and his piano work is at the centre of ‘I Smell Trouble’, while his access to different chord voicings on the piano informed other songs on Life Is Fine. Unusually for a solo artist, Kelly features guest lead vocalists on two songs on the album; Linda Bull fronts ‘Don’t Explain’, while Vika Bull is larger than life on ‘My Man’s Got A Cold’. Writing from a woman’s perspective allows Kelly a different angle as a song-writer; while the bluesy, dramatic ‘My Man’s Got A Cold’, with its unsympathetic portrayal of man flu, breaks the album’s flow, it’s an excellent song nonetheless.
Elsewhere, Life Is Fine has more conventional, but still excellent, Paul Kelly material. There are pretty acoustic song like ‘Letter In The Rain’, ‘Petrichor’ and ‘Josephina’, while the excellent trio of upbeat songs that open Life Is Fine are a good basis for comparisons to Kelly’s early albums with The Messengers.
In some ways, consistency is a bane for Kelly – he’s been releasing high quality albums for so long that it’s easy to take him for granted. But Life Is Fine is an excellent, high quality effort from one of the world’s unheralded great song-writers, a 62 year old with a great back catalogue who’s still writing strong material.
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Read about the discographies of musical acts from the 1960s to the present day. Browse this site's review archives or enjoy these random selections:
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Great into/review, G.
Vika’s performance of ‘My man’s got a cold’ at the Opera House gig the other day was a stone cold highlight!
And Mr Kelly is indeed a national treasure who probably should be an international one. Though I don’t imagine he cares that much.
Oh cool – I imagine it would be great live. The new album has a bunch of really strong songs – amazing that he’s able to keep up such a high level for so long.
I do think he deserves wider recognition as a great songwriter – his catalogue is so vast and so strong.
Great piece, great tunes, Pauls great! Vika is wonderful.
Have you heard Vika’s other stuff? I remember Vika and Linda’s 1994 hit, “When Will You Fall For Me”, written by Mark Seymour from Hunters and Collectors, but I don’t know anything else.
No I haven’t. This is how I find new talent, when collaborations happen. You know PK is going to make it good. You can see the odd glimpse of him eating up her performance. What a thrill for him.