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Like I always say, "Anyone who thinks getting kicked in the nuts by one person sucks has never gotten kicked in the nuts by two people at the same time."
Post subject: Re: Stranded Far From Home / The Australian Music Thread
Posted: Wed March 01, 2017 6:54 am
Misplaced My Sponge
Joined: Thu February 02, 2017 10:39 am Posts: 5619 Location: Most likely at the office...
Whilst I am very aware that Spenno will disagree with me, I would strongly advise all my North American RMers to consider attending an upcoming show by Paul Kelly who is touring in the US and Canada this May. This guy is a legend in my opinion. Intimate venues, perfect situation to check him out. An Australian institution who has the ability to make my spine tingle with his words.
Paul Kelly, Australia’s preeminent songwriter, will spend the month of May performing intimate shows across America and Canada, his first concerts on this continent since 2013. This tour is in support of Kelly’s 2016 release, the uniquely conceived Death’s Dateless Night, although he will also be playing songs from his award-winning career that has earned him induction into Australian Recording Industry Association’s Hall of Fame and, just earlier this year, being appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his distinguished service to the performing arts.
Death’s Dateless Night, a collaboration with the highly regarded Australian multi-instrumentalist Charlie Owen, contains songs that they have played at various funerals. Featuring a mix of covers, traditional tunes and a few Kelly originals, the album’s vibe is actually far from funereal. The spare, stirring set has been hailed as a “powerful meditation on life, death and the mess we make in-between.”
Owen, a veteran of several Australian bands including the Divinyls, will be accompanying Kelly on this tour, which starts May 6 in Chicago and concludes May 31 in Portland. Joining Kelly too are his daughters, Madeleine and Memphis Kelly. The two, who have their own music careers, both appeared on Death’s Dateless Night as well.
Critical acclaim for Death’s Dateless Night includes PopMatters, which asserts, “The power of their renditions … does not necessarily come from the sadness or melancholia of the tracks selected … Death’s Dateless Night is a funeral album which does not just mourn, but celebrates, hopes, and reminisces”; and No Depression, which notes that “Together, Kelly and Owen find the beauty in the end of life by thoughtfully choosing music for celebrating a life well lived.”
Dateless Night is just the latest in Paul Kelly’s recent run of fascinatingly eclectic projects. 2016 also saw Kelly releasing the seven-song mini-album Seven Sonnets & A Song, in which he re-worked William Shakespeare’s love sonnets into songs. For The Merri Soul Sessions (2015) he enlisted a variety of vocalists to reinterpret his tunes with a R&B revue feel. In 2013, Kelly teamed up with Neil Finn of Crowded House fame for a highly successful Australian tour that resulted in the live album Goin’ Your Way, which came out as a two-CD set and a DVD. Kelly’s most ambitious musical endeavor, however, has been his “A-Z” project. It began as a series of concerts where he would perform his set of songs in alphabetical order, and he wound up creating an eight-CD, 105-song live box set, which came out in the U.S. in 2012.
The A-Z Recordings, in the words of Paste’s Darren Wang, projected “a transparency into the craft of songwriting that is unsurpassed in pop music today,” while Thom Jurek in All Music Guide lauded Kelly as “a songwriter whose peers are few; they include Townes Van Zandt, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Ronnie Lane.”
Critically, accolades have followed Paul Kelly throughout his career. His 1985 breakout album, Post, was chosen Rolling Stone Australia’s Album of the Year. American music journalists started singing their praises when A&M Records put out Paul Kelly and the Messengers’ first three U.S. releases, Gossip (1987), Under the Sun (1988) and So Much Water So Close To Home (1989), and continued on with Kelly’s solo outings. Trouser Press’ Dave Schulps called Kelly “an extraordinary songwriter, with an especially keen eye for lyrical detail” and Mike Boehm, in the Los Angeles Times, observed that Kelly “writes some of the most accomplished erotic love songs in pop.” Rolling Stone senior writer David Fricke may have described Paul Kelly most succinctly when he declared him “one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise.”
Kelly, however, has a special relationship with his home country, much like Bruce Springsteen has with America. Rock journalist Jasper Bruce recently wrote that in Australia, Kelly is “a member of the family. He’s someone who crystallizes the spirit of a nation with the stroke of a guitar and the purr of a harmonica. He’s someone who, tactfully and effortlessly, can inhabit the skin of any Australian.”
His work is having an impact on a younger generation of musicians. When critic’s-darling Australian artist Courtney Barnett was 16, her English teacher had the students analyze and dissect Kelly’s song To Her Door, going through each lyric and word. The young musician had “a bit of a moment” with the assignment; as she would tell NPR, “When I heard this song, it probably opened up seeing stories in a different way and how they can develop. Such a simple little story can have so much impact when it’s drawn out. That song always sticks out for me because of that moment that I had with it that started a bit of a snowball of change.”
These shows offer a rare opportunity to hear this eloquent wordsmith in an intimate setting so, whether you are a longtime fan or a recent convert, you can become “a member of the family” too.
Tour dates 05/06 - Chicago, IL - Szold Hall 05/08 - Toronto, ON - The Drake Underground 05/10 - Northhampton, MA - Iron Horse Music Hall 05/11 - Cambridge, MA - Club Passim 05/12 - Fairfield, CT - Stageone 05/13 - Vienna, VA - Jammin Java 05/15 - Philadelphia, PA - World Café Life – Upstairs 05/16 - New York, NY - Le Poisson Rouge 05/19 - Los Angeles, CA - The Hotel Café 05/21 - San Francisco, CA - Swedish American Hall 05/23 - Vancouver, BC - Biltmore 05/26 - Calgary, AB - Commonwealth Bar 05/27 - Edmonton, AB - Mercury Room
Post subject: Re: Stranded Far From Home / The Australian Music Thread
Posted: Wed March 08, 2017 5:25 am
Posting (live)
Joined: Wed February 06, 2013 2:47 am Posts: 17535 Location: Scooby Doo
Higgs wrote:
Sarah Blasko is doing a show at a small venue near me in July. Do I want to go or no?
Same and I'm not sure either. In fact I don't want to go because my wife's sister in law will be there and she's a pain in the arse. I'd prefer to sit in a pub by myself.
Camp Cope played a lounge room set the other day that I wish I'd seen.
Post subject: Re: Stranded Far From Home / The Australian Music Thread
Posted: Wed March 08, 2017 5:41 am
Misplaced My Sponge
Joined: Thu February 02, 2017 10:39 am Posts: 5619 Location: Most likely at the office...
THANK YOU! I didn't know they were playing here but just grabbed 2 tickets to their show in May. They are actually supporting "Against Me" who I have never heard of, but that's cool. Been looking to see these ladies play for a while.
And yeah, I think I might skip on the Blasko. Your sis in law sounds remarkably like my own...
Post subject: Re: Stranded Far From Home / The Australian Music Thread
Posted: Thu March 09, 2017 2:42 am
Misplaced My Sponge
Joined: Thu February 02, 2017 10:39 am Posts: 5619 Location: Most likely at the office...
Just got a Ticketek alert in my inbox and snagged 2 tickets to see Rockwiz Live in July. Should be some fun. I've always felt I could do OK on this show, albeit I would be terribly nervous if ever up on stage.
Think I might just sit quietly and enjoy the show...
01 Ubu 02 Architecture Lecture 03 Dogo Argentino 04 Lagotto Romagnolo 05 Chelyabinsk 06 Twilight Driving 07 Groundswell 08 Also Gesellschaft 09 No. 28 10 Rogues 11 L’Heure des Sorcières 12 Everything Is As It Should Be
01 Ubu 02 Architecture Lecture 03 Dogo Argentino 04 Lagotto Romagnolo 05 Chelyabinsk 06 Twilight Driving 07 Groundswell 08 Also Gesellschaft 09 No. 28 10 Rogues 11 L’Heure des Sorcières 12 Everything Is As It Should Be
Speaking of Perth bands - any love for Jebediah here?
They are to this day one of my all-time favourite Aussie bands - they're just so damn fun. For the uninitiated I guess you'd call them fuzz-punk-poprock, with grungy and angular guitar tones that recall what I love about Nirvana and Sleater-Kinney respectively. Singer Kevin Mitchell (who also has five solo albums as 'Bob Evans') sounds like a more nasal version of Elliott Smith, and has an underrated knack for brilliant melodies. In their late nineties hey-day they featured highly in Triple J's Hottest 100 and put on some of my most memorable and formative concert and festival experiences.
Here's a taster for anyone curious from their first (and most successful) album Slightly Odway which is probably in my personal top 10 of all time:
Post subject: Re: Stranded Far From Home / The Australian Music Thread
Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 4:49 pm
Rank This Poster
Joined: Mon March 18, 2013 11:48 pm Posts: 5223 Location: A Dark Place
Pumped for Camp Cope's summer U.S. dates.
Feels weird to spend hundreds of dollars on a 3-date road trip to see what will amount to probably three 30-minute sets, but I'm hoping for some in-stores or solo sets from G Maq along the way.
Their debut is probably my favorite album of the past 5 years.
Post subject: Re: Stranded Far From Home / The Australian Music Thread
Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 5:39 pm
Misplaced My Sponge
Joined: Thu February 02, 2017 10:39 am Posts: 5619 Location: Most likely at the office...
I like the cut of your jib, 'run.
I saw them on Friday night at a small-ish pub in Perth, and they were really great. Only 30 minutes, but a wonderful 30 minutes. They are impressive in their ability to get the album sound and clear vocals from a live setting.
Their debut would be in the conversation for my most fave recent album also. Just great stuff.
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