Paul Kelly “Fever Longing Still”

Creative fire still burns for Australia’s finest songsmith with first album release of the decade.

With “Fever Longing Still”, his 29th studio album, and first solo release of self-penned songs since 2018’s “Nature”, Paul Kelly has reaffirmed his position as Australia’s finest singer-songwriter. Recorded at Roundhead Studio in New Zealand owned by non-other than that other antipodean songwriting genius, Neil Finn, Kelly has once again enrolled longtime band members Peter Luscombe on drums, Bill McDonald on bass, Dan Kelly on guitar, along with relatively newer recruits Cameron Bruce on keys and Ash Naylor on guitar, both having joined the lineup back in 2007. Collectively they have managed to keep a freshness to the musical landscape, with subtle stylistic shifts, drawing from a myriad of generic flavours that all blend together, more chameleon-like than magpie.

The album opens with what is probably its strongest number, and certainly one of Kelly’s finest songs to date in ‘Houndstooth Dress’. This quirky track begins with a spoken instruction from Kelly against the staccato chords of the keyboard as he gives direction to the rest of the band, indicating the newness of the track that lyrically teases with its playful sexual tension. That tension is transferred to frustration and regret on the follow-up number ‘Love Has Made…Of Me’, that encompasses faint echoes of Paul Weller, whilst third track ‘Taught By Experts’, has been circulating as a song for 30 years, with it’s first incarnation appearing on 1992 album “Smoke”, but here it finally feels like the gestation period is over.

Throughout his career Kelly has regularly incorporated the vastness of Australia’s landscape and culture into his songwriting, along with his own personal experiences of growing up in the sixth-largest country in the world. These traits are most noticeable here on the nostalgic ‘Northern Rivers’, and the closing track ‘Going To The River With Dad’, which recounts his childhood memories of fishing trips shared with his father, who died at the age of 53 when Kelly was just thirteen years old, the narrative conjuring up a tangible warmth of mutual love and affection. Elsewhere the sweetness of the string arrangement on ‘Let’s Work It Out In Bed’, evokes memories of the classic Philadelphia Soul music from the early seventies, before it descended into disco, while the understated country vibe of ‘Harpoon To The Heart’, delivers a healthy slice of dark lyrical humour.

With Kelly now fast approaching his seventieth birthday, it is understandable to find him regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the songwriting profession. Having long been compared to the likes of Elvis Costello both in style and quality, there is now a growing similarity to Bob Dylan, certainly latter-day Dylan, both in vocal delivery and sagacious rumination within the reflective narrative that inhabits tracks such as the delightful ‘Double Business Bound’, and ‘All Those Smiling Faces’. Of course Kelly has always been inspired by the finest wordsmiths through the ages, the title for this album coming from a line in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147, “My love is as a fever longing still”, while his own poetry has graced his songs throughout a career fast approaching fifty years, in a manner that doesn’t simply offer a social commentary of our times, but more importantly, turns the spotlight on the unseen, while offering a voice for the unheard.

Most of all though, Kelly’s songs endeavour to decipher the language of love in all its different shades, and with “Fever Longing Still”, he has once again delivered an album that is both a captivating and immersive listen, that immediately grabs the attention and holds it right to the final note. There may still be corners of the musical globe that show obstinate resistance to the genius of Kelly, but for the rest of us his latest release is a resounding confirmation that at the age of sixty-nine, this master-craftsman is still on peak form.