By - 17 Mar 2011
"Paul Kelly has been here many times before.
Usually, he's popped across the Tasman with a musician or four behind him, playing to an audience who mostly discovered the singer-songwriter sometime in the 80s through albums which married the vivid storytelling of his lyrics to spare band arrangements mixing rock, country, folk and lots of guitar."
By Russell Baillie
Read this review on NZHerald.co.nz
"This time though he's cut down on the backing. But he's brought
almost all his songs instead - one hundred of them, delivered
alphabetically at a rate of 25 or so a night.
The A-Z show had its origins in a summer spiegeltent season in
hometown Melbourne six years ago. Its subsequently has grown into a
book (How to Make Gravy, in which Kelly elaborates on the songs and
any other subjects) as well as a CD box set and even an app. All of
which for the true Kelly-tragic, is far more rewarding than yet
another best-of volume.
But - to quote Dumb Things, a second-half highlight - welcome
strangers, to the show ... a great show which on the first night of
its Auckland Arts Festival season traversed A to E in Kelly's back
catalogue, starting with his bittersweet ode to his birthplace
Adelaide and ending with the Raymond Carver-inspired Everything's
Turning to White.
That was before encores which managed to stay within the
alphabetical restrictions, holding back After the Show to a fitting
place in the reprise To be picky Kelly and sideman guitarist/nephew
Dan, didn't play everything in Uncle Paul's book.
There was no Behind the Bowler's Arm. But with a compulsory
reading of his heroic epic, Bradman, maybe one cricket song was
enough.
And there was no Beggar on the Street of Love which he wrote for
Jenny Morris, though there was Difficult Woman which he wrote for
Renee Geyer (and survived to tell the tale).
But what was apparent from this stripped-back approach was that it
held up Kelly's songs to the light and they sparkled anew.
The alphabetical sorting neatly balanced things out between old
and more recent tunes, between the familiar and obscure and between
songs that were autobiographical, fiction and non-fiction - or a
combination of all of the above.
In between singing and flipping the big cards showing what letter
we were at (nice typeface), Kelly offered anecdotes, which, despite
having already been spun into that 600-page memoir, didn't sound
well-worn.
And he didn't just stand there and play guitar all night either.
Anastasia was delivered as an a cappella/harmonica one-two; Change
Your Mind, a song with lyrics cribbed from other songs and which
quotes Bic Runga's Sway, had him delicately prodding at the town
hall Steinway.
Mostly though it was Kelly, his keening voice and guitar aided by
young Dan's sweetly reverberating lead lines and and vocal
harmonies.
There was occasional clarinet by his partner Sian Prior, which
helped take the formerly reggae-powered Coma into klezmer
territory, while her backing vocals gave Deeper Water an odd
ethereal touch of the Dame Joans near the end.
Given the arts festival context, I did wonder if the minimalist
show might have been enhanced by some supporting video - historical
footage of Bradman; postcards from those Cities of Texas, photos of
the late great fellow musicians he referred to in his introductions
like Go-Between Grant McLennan and longtime guitarist Steve
Connolly. That sort of thing.
But, of course, the pictures are all there in Kelly's A-Z. You
just had to listen for them. And seeing and hearing Kelly's musical
life flash before your ears is a film festival in itself. Further
screenings come highly recommended."