Paul Kelly is 70 and has never been bigger. He has just headlined his first arena tour – which sold out. In an industry as ageist as Australian music, it’s a remarkable career trajectory; there’s been no sudden revival of interest, nor a belated rediscovery of his vast catalogue. Slowly, over a career spanning 50 years, Kelly has become ubiquitous.
Overfamiliarity comes at a price. There are people who have never listened to Kelly who appear to loudly resent his success. Much of the pushback seems to stem from the annual celebration of How to Make Gravy, Kelly’s Christmas perennial-from-prison. They never want to hear another word from Joe, the fuck-up who was already the subject of what is now probably Kelly’s second-most famous song, To Her Door.
Seventy is the title of Kelly’s 30th studio album, themed around ageing, regrets and reflections on how the world will keep turning long after we’re gone. The Magpies – a song based on a Denis Glover poem which Kelly first recorded on his album Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds – will keep on quardle-oodle-ardling. And Joe’s ghost is still taunting Rita from beyond the grave. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is a traditional Kelly album of classic folk-rock arrangements and elegantly crafted lyrics. The band is present: guitarists Ashley Naylor and nephew Dan Kelly, drummer Peter Luscombe, bassist Bill McDonald and Cameron Bruce on keyboards. The only absentees are long-term backing vocalists Vika and Linda Bull, with Meg Washington and Rebecca Barnard guesting on one song each.
With no real surprises, all one can really do is play each song on its merits. That may be difficult in the case of Rita Wrote a Letter, given that it’s the third instalment in the Trilogy of Joe, but it’s hooked to such a sturdy melody that it’s hard to argue; give it a couple of listens and it sticks like glue. It’s keeping good company: these 13 songs (including the bookends Tell Us a Story, parts one and two) are warm, memorable and easy to like.
Of course, mortality stalks Seventy. The Body Keeps the Score tells how time and bad habits catch up with all of us; on I’m Not Afraid of the Dark, Kelly looks the grim reaper in the eye: “An old man thinks he’s still a lad / Sad songs never make me sad”. Speaking of being a lad, Kelly is still sex-mad, raging against the dying of the light on Made for Me, with Barnard cooing alongside him.
Seventy comes almost exactly a year after Kelly’s last album, Fever Longing Still. He’s in a rich vein of form, seemingly unable to stop the music from pouring out. If you’re a long-term Kelly fan, the only real competition will be the songs already embedded in your life story. You might say it’s all gravy from here.
Seventy by Paul Kelly is out now via through EMI
