1991

Paul Kelly and the Messengers
with Archie Roach
Tivoli Hotel

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Paul Kelly has to be one of our most eclectic songwriters. The influences crowd in from all directions. Irish folk, American country, Dylan, Guthrie, Costello, even bands like UK Squeeze- they all seem to be in there somewhere. Not that there is anything derivative about Kelly, it’s just that he has such good antennae for all the sounds that sound good.

He has been making great pop music since the year dot. Or at least since 1981 when Talk, the first Paul Kelly and the Dots album was released, followed the next year by Manilla. Then, in 1985, he delivered Post with what were to be the first versions of Incident on South Dowling, White Train, and Adelaide. But it was the double set, Gossip, in 1986, that really showed what Kelly and the Dots, now Coloured Girls, could do. And that was no fluke either- Under the Sun, a year later, contained even stronger material with classics like Dumb Things and Same Old Walk.

The 1989 album, So Much Water So Close to Home, Kelly’s finest album to date, displayed the Messengers at their tasty best and Kelly creatively more adventurous than ever. With American producer Scott Litt the band revealed a depth in their sound to match the lyrical density of songs such as Everything is Turning to White, Kelly’s intriguing double-take on a Raymond Carver short story.

Currently touring the new double album , Comedy, Kelly and the Messengers are indicating that changes are coming. The singer has said in recent interviews that separate projects are likely. The band, who accompanied Michelle Shocked early in the year, have their own plans for writing and recording while Kelly seems more confident than ever as a soloist. It’s all very mutual but -there were certainly no rifts apparent when Kelly and the Messengers recently blew the dust and most of the paint off the rafters at the Tiv. Eighteen months ago they played a likeable but patchy set at the Thebarton Theatre, this time round we are talking height of the powers.

Archie Roach first though. Kelly has been performing Roach’s Took the Children Away, an elegiac account of the compulsory fostering of Aboriginals in the 1950s, for a while now. The decision to include Roach’s band (which includes his wife Ruby) on the present tour, is an even better idea. Opening with Charcoal Lane, title track of the excellent album which Kelly produced, Archie Roach quietly demonstrated why he is rapidly becoming a creative and political force around the country. Softly spoken with a voice as good as Sam Cooke’s, he and his band were warmly received despite the electrical gremlins. Performing No,No,No, Native Born and Sister Brother, all from the album, Roach with his sweet, lilting vocals and assertive Nunga-pride lyrics showed how he might well be the one to mainstream Aboriginal music.

Ruby Roach also led with strong compositions of her own- Down City Streets and Black Woman, Black Wife. Archie might get the billing but this is a partnership. The sound rig for their set was woeful and it was clearly giving the singer grief when feedback from his guitar player mutilated Took the Children Away. These things, however, can be easily remedied. Next time round, Archie and Ruby Roach will really be in charge.

Paul Kelly began his hundred and fifty minutes with the domestic short story, Other People’s Houses, reminding us that he is one of the very few performers around who can write songs about social class. Stories of Me, in the perked up Comedy version, followed, then Brighter, also from the new album. A brace of tunes from So Much Water – You Can’t Take it With You and No You really brought the band on line. With No You, Steve Connolly’s guitar work flourished for the first of many times while Jon Schofield on bass and drummer Michael Barclay maintained the usual splendid rhythm department.

Kelly and the band kept stacking them on – Keep it to Yourself (like Don’t Start Me Talking, from the Positively Fourth Street school of retribution), Take Your Time and She’s A Melody. Keyboard player, Peter Bull let loose with an incendiary intro for To Her Door which was succeeded by John Cale’s Buffalo Ballet. After that Kelly took up his harmonica and sang a set of solos including his Gurindji land rights anthem, From Little Things Big Things Grow . With a tune borrowed from The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and a chorus melody straight from God, Paul Kelly walks among the shades of Guthrie and Ochs, Zimmerman and Seeger. It is a marvellous song, one of his very best.Others in the solo set, the wistful I Can’t Believe We Were Married and Turning to White also proved that Kelly can more than hold a pub crowd on his own.

It was the best of both worlds, though, when the Messengers returned for Blue Stranger and a rock hard version of Dumb Things. All Downhill From Here and Wintercoat – with a fine lyric and Connolly playing the kind of throaty fuzz solos that David Cohen used to do for Country Joe and the Fish- added new pleasures as Kelly powered through the set finishing with a Smiths cover, some vintage rockakellybilly, a plangent unrecorded song- When I first Met Your Mother and a new rendering of Sweet Guy. Instead of the discrepant up-beat recorded version, Kelly put a slow blues to the dark lyric – with arresting effect. It was a powerful point to end things. In fact, Paul Kelly and the Messengers were enticed back for six encores- including Kelly’s song for Jenny Morris, Beggar on the Street of Love and standards, Under the Sun and The Execution, the latter driven as always, by Peter Bull’s synth and Steve Connolly’s searing guitar lines. Kelly had played thirty five songs from the canon in a performance that would be hard to fault. He is one of the most creative souls to come out of this city – someone should invite him to an arts festival.

The Adelaide Review, No.90, July, 1991, p.33.