Paul Kelly
★★★★
Seventy
COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP
Aussie songwriter treats himself to a significant birthday album.
It’s just shy of 40 years since Paul Kelly’s breakthrough album, Gossip, and he still hasn’t turned in a duffer, every one reconfirming him as the first person you’d put on a list of fantasy campfire companions. Seventy’s centrepiece is Rita Wrote A Letter, a sequel to Kelly’s unlikely 1996 Christmas song How To Make Gravy. The titular letter is Rita’s reply to Joe’s hope of post-prison reconciliation (spoiler alert: Joe’s dead, Rita and Dan are expecting a baby). The album, however, is no one-trick pony. Keep On Coming Back For More is lascivious blues rock; behind the quirky tongue-twisting chorus of The Magpies is a sad tale of a hopeful young couple’s dashed farming dreams;