- Deep into his fourth decade as a recording artist, Paul Kelly’s stature in Australian music only grows as time goes on. Last year’s release Life Is Fine was his twenty-third solo album but first number one. New release Nature has repeated the feat, debuting this week at the top of the charts.
The album breezes by smoothly, with simple instrumentation and all but one of its songs clocking in under three minutes. The title could be seen as referring to this simpler or more natural kind of songwriting. Or there are a few mentions of the natural world of trees and animals, and a few exploring ideas of human nature, especially as it relates to matters of the heart.
A notable thing about Nature is that Kelly has put to music five poems by legendary poets like Walt Whitman, Philip Larkin and Sylvia Plath. Some poetry purists may be upset, but in general they work pretty well as songs, and it will certainly introduce some classic poetry to a new audience. Having written so many songs over the years, you can hardly begrudge Kelly the opportunity to let someone else do the hard work of lyric writing either. The poems do jar a little with Kelly’s own compositions though as he switches voice – especially when Kelly, who traditionally focuses on the specific and local, gets all epic when taking on poems of Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manly Hopkins.
These songs are not the only time Kelly narrates someone else’s voice. Listeners may recall the furore of the Brisbane Writers Festival a couple of years ago, when novelist Lionel Shriver defended the right of fiction writers to take on the personas of cultural identities other than their own. Shriver’s speech was criticised by Yassmin Abdel-Magied and once the dust had cleared from the media discourse even the festival organisers had turned on their keynote speaker.
It’s interesting in the light of this to listen Nature’s second single, A Bastard Like Me. It is sung in first person, in the character of deceased aboriginal activist Charles Perkins. The song never gets too specific in its characterisation, but it’s also certainly not the first time Kelly has inhabited the character of aboriginal people. Some of his most affecting songs have used the same technique, notably Special Treatment, Maralinga and Rally Round The Drum. Numerous songs of his have taken on female narrators, and famously the voices of prisoners and accused terrorists.
A Bastard Like Me is not Kelly’s finest song, but it’s notable that there hasn’t been any controversy of the type Lionel Shriver faced. In fact none other than Archie Roach has in the past praised Kelly’s writing on aboriginal issues, calling him “Australia’s bard”. It’s testament to Kelly’s reputation as a teller of Australian stories that even in our fractured cultural landscape no one has batted an eyelid at this composition. In Kelly’s hands, the idea of finding empathy with others through the medium of folk-rock songs seems completely natural; if you’ll pardon the pun. As he adds another album to his formidable back catalogue, that is indeed a valuable thing for a writer to contribute to our world.
- Andy Paine.