One Paul Kelly song

by VIN MASKELL

Some songs stop you in your tracks. They make you feel and think and wonder.

After I heard Feelings of Grief, the opening song on Paul Kelly's new album, I doubted I would pay much attention to the other 10 songs on Stolen Apples.

And when the song had finished I wondered if I was game enough to listen to it again, for fear of where it might take me. And for fear that I my initial response was an over-reaction.

I first heard Feelings of Grief on the radio, at about 11.30 in the evening. Laying in bed, trying to get warm. Waiting for my wife. It was dark and cold and I was tired but I sensed, even just through the tinny clock radio, that I might be hearing something special.

I next heard it a few days later, after I'd bought Stolen Apples from the local independent CD shop. I took the album home and played it during a rare opening the house to myself for an hour or so.

Feelings of Grief caught my ear as I cooked the evening meal. It dared me to play it again, but I did not for several hours. After tea, and with a room to myself. There was that worry - was I making too much of the song?

Feelings of Grief begins with a mournful one-minute solo from an instrument listed as a 'mey'. It's not quite a trumpet, not quite a bugle. More like a clarinet, an eastern or Asian clarinet. It's a wistful, wailing solo, a sound that leaves you a little stranded. Standing, peering into a darkness.

The song then finds a more formal rhythm, a slow beat that takes you into four short verses where Kelly sings achingly of grief 'breaking over me/Wave after wave like the rolling sea'. (Another one of Kelly's finest songs, 1995's Deeper Water, also uses the image of the ocean to great effect. That song is a life-story in six verses.)

Five minutes later Feelings of Grief is over, as a drumbeat fades away like a last heartbeat. The song is over but it stays with you.

Despite its themes, the song is restrained. It's not a song you hear. It's a song you listen to. And listen out for.

Everyone has feelings of grief, some from very early in their lives. Grief stays with you, no matter what you might read about 'moving on' or 'closure'. Grief might change shape but it never really goes away.

It is Paul Kelly's gift that he can articulate such important feelings. It is his audience's good fortune that he shares his gifts.

Is Kelly grieving for anyone in particular in this song? Presumably so. Do we know who the person is? No, except for the words 'my friend'. And that is all we need to know. Every artist has the right to keep some things to themselves.

Listening to Feelings of Grief is like looking into a deep, dark well. Or like trying to swim out to the buoys when you know that cramp in the calves could make it hard to get back to shore. You want the experience but you don't know what it will do to you, or where it will take you.

Paul Kelly is touring Australia throughout August and September.

18 July 2007

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