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Artist:
Jeff Kelly Release title: Melancholy Sun Catalogue number: CAM025-28CD Format: 4CDs and booklet in case Length: 239 mins approx Release date:10 Oct 99 (Out-of-print) |
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| As main songwriter
of Seattle's Green Pajamas, Jeff Kelly has been quietly
building a reputation as one of America's most skilled
pop craftsmen. What many don't realise is that Kelly has
also been busy creating a wonderful body of solo work,
mostly sent into the world by stealth courtesy of a
series of cassette and vinyl releases with minimal
distribution and no fanfare. This four CD set presents
remasters of three classic Kelly solo releases with the
addition of bonus tracks, and adds the recent, previously
unreleased "The Rosary and the House of Jade".
The style is intensely personal but not self-indulgent,
weaving spell-binding melodies from a wide variety of
influences - Cohen, Ray Davies, The Beatles, various
European folk forms, and the romantic poets and
literature of the 19th Century all figure prominently.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the limited technology
used in its creation, the material on these discs has an
unforgettable impact on the listener, swirling
acid-tinged folk-rock that envelopes the mind like haloes
around gas lamps at midnight on a foggy city street. In a
different century of course. |
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"Coffee
in Nepal" (Cassette on Green Monkey 1987, LP on Didi
Records in 1992). "Not many people heard
Kelly in the late '80s, even within the alternative rock
community, for two reasons: his albums were only
available on cassette, and his moody folk-rock was
totally out of sync with the rest of the Seattle indie
scene. That's unfortunate, as this solo debut revealed
him as a tuneful, but not sappy, troubadour singing sad,
quirky, but appealing songs. Influenced by late-'60s
psychedelia and British folk-rock, with a vocal timbre
reminiscent of British rockers such as Ray Davies and the
Zombies' Colin Blunstone, the arrangements put acoustic
guitars to the fore, with tasty touches of light
percussion, sitar, and Casio." - The All Music Guide |
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"Portugal"
(Cassette on Green Monkey 1990). Like
"Coffee in Nepal", "Portugal was recorded
at Kelly's home on four-track cassette, from which it
gains the same singularity of vision and immediacy as its
predecessor. The songwriting is stronger, however,
containing some of Kelly's finest work. The seven song
stretch from "Portugal" to "Oh, My
Mary" is as sublime a conjunction of
multi-instrumental acoustic alchemy and neo-folk
song-writing mastery as it is possible to imagine in the
dimming days of this century. Raw, bittersweet rapture -
timeless and transcendent. Other notable pieces are the
widescreen Western folk epic "She's Gone, Oh Daddy
She's Gone", and the intricately-constructed
folk-psych of "The Sky Comes Crashing in Her
Eyes". |
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"Private
Electrical Storm" (Cassette on Green Monkey 1992).
Distinctly different from its predecessors, "Private
Electrical Storm" experiments with the addition of
romantic European elements to the folk-rock mix, so
keyboards and dark obsessional lyrics predominate, and
the whole thing seems to swirl around the head like some
desperate waltz along the edge of a precipice. Key tracks
are the Cohen-influenced "Marching to the Moon"
and "Queen of the Violet Room", the beautifully
pre-Raphaelite "My Elizabeth to Me" and the
exquisite "Sand (In Search of Daisy Clover)".
Sonically, the canvas is broader, many of the tracks
having been recorded in the eight-track studio of Green
Monkey proprietor Tom Dyer. |
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"The
Rosary and the House of Jade" (previously unreleased
1997).
An exquisitely rendered romantic
"concept" piece about love and espionage,
containing 14 tracks full of riotously tuneful
signification. Like so many of Kelly's works, you feel
like you are tiptoeing through a Freudian minefield -
these are songs that could kill. Recorded between mixing
sessions for the Green Pajamas' "Strung Behind the
Sun", and various Green Pajamas members feature
throughout. Originally self-released in an edition of 50
at Christmas 1997, all of which were given away as gifts.
We are glad that Jeff let us bring this one to a wider
audience, it deserves to be heard. |
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