Fever Longing Still Paul Kelly

• 1 Houndstooth Dress 04:05
• 2 Love Has Made a Fool of Me 04:08
• 3 Taught by Experts 03:01
• 4 Hello Melancholy, Hello Joy 02:54
• 5 Northern Rivers 02:53
• 6 Double Business Bound 04:08
• 7 Let's Work It out in Bed 02:50
• 8 All Those Smiling Faces 03:40
• 9 Harpoon to the Heart 03:21
• 10 Back to the Future 03:06
• 11 Eight Hours Sleep 03:41
• 12 Going to the River with Dad 03:54
• Total Runtime 41:41

Info for Fever Longing Still

For his latest album FEVER LONGING STILL (release date: November 1, 2024 via Gawd Aggie / Cooking Vinyl) which was recorded at Neil Finn’s studio Roundhead in New Zealand, he’s focused on the topic of Love. The fire of love. The pain of love. Love of family. Love entwined in memory and place. Love has always been at the heart of many of Paul Kelly’s greatest songs. To Her Door, How to Make Gravy, Careless, If I Could Start Today Again, Deeper Water, When I First Met Your Ma, Sweet Guy, Dumb Things, Firewood and Candles, The Oldest Story in the Book.

Taken from a line in Sonnet 147 by Shakespeare, whose writing has thrilled and inspired Kelly ever since schooldays, Fever Longing Still is his first set of new original material since 2018’s Nature, and it delivers 12 additions to that superb catalog of love songs spanning more than 40 years. “Hello Melancholy, Hello Joy,” as one of the new songs says. Recorded at Roundhead, Neil Finn’s studio in New Zealand.

As any of the best-loved songs from Kelly’s pen, “All Those Smiling Faces” is an emotional and vivid exploration of recollection, like peering inside the memories in a photo album. “Down the years the family face / Keeps jumping around from place to place / A look, a shape, a nose, an eye / That everlasting thing that’s never gonna die.” Taking inspiration from three of Kelly’s favorite poets, Dana Gioia in Finding a Box of Family Letters, Wislawa Szymborska’s Letters of the Dead and Thomas Hardy’s Heredity.

First appearing as a banjo-led version on 1992’s bluegrass album Smoke, “Taught By Experts” also surfaced as an acoustic guitar song on the Live, May 1992 album and took on yet another form on the soundtrack to the TV series Fireflies. “I have been circling that song for years,” Kelly says. “We thought we should try it with a chiming electric guitar part, and when we did that, we knew that was it.” That guitar part nods back to “Leaps and Bounds,” a love song to Melbourne, from the classic 1986 album Gossip.

Among the newly-penned tracks, “Harpoon to the Heart,” is the kind of song which might have been written any time in the past 100 years. “Dan had an idea for a guitar part where he played his line then put a harmony line on top of it the way Chet Atkins or Les Paul and Mary Ford would have done,” Kelly says. “It has a quirky, playful spirit to it, which earned its place on the record. That one was written quickly and ‘Houndstooth Dress’ came out in one go. For others we went right around the block,” Kelly says.

“There has been a long gap since the last album of new songs,” Kelly says, “and I realize now that this record is a bit like Gossip, an album with a long gestation where the songs are all quite different to each other in style.” Like Gossip, Fever Longing Still is an album driven by a band in peak form.

“Looking back on what we’ve done with these songs, it’s really a band record,” Kelly says. “That made me reflect on the longevity of the band, this squad. Peter Luscombe (drums) has been with me for more than 30 years, Bill McDonald (bass) and Dan Kelly (guitar) for 20. Even the newbies Cameron Bruce (keys) and Ash Naylor (guitar) have been with me since 2007. “Our philosophy is eclectic; we want to make each song different from the last. I just love that when I bring a new song to them, it can take on a completely new life.”

Paul Kelly, vocals, acoustic guitars
Peter Luscombe, drums, percussion
Bill McDonald, bass
Dan Kelly, electric guitars, mandolin, harmony vocals
Ashley Naylor, electric guitars
Cameron Bruce, keyboards, harmony vocals

Recorded and mixed by Steve Schram

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 48 kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96 kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

Paul Kelly
After growing up in Adelaide, Kelly travelled around Australia before settling in Melbourne in 1976. He became involved in the local music scene and recorded two albums with Paul Kelly and the Dots.

Kelly moved to Sydney by 1985, where he formed Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, later changing the name of the band to Paul Kelly and The Messengers. At the end of the 1980s, Kelly returned to Melbourne, and in 1991 he disbanded the Messengers.Since 1992 Paul Kelly has had a solo career, fronting the Paul Kelly Band, and since then has worked in occasional collaborations with other songwriters and performers

Kelly has written numerous Top 40 singles include “Billy Baxter”, “Before Too Long”, “Darling It Hurts”, “To Her Door” (his highest-charting local hit in 1987), “Dumb Things” (appeared on United States charts in 1988), and “Roll on Summer”. Top-20 albums include Gossip, Under the Sun, Comedy, Songs from the South (1997compilation, his best-charting album), …Nothing but a Dream, and Stolen Apples.

Kelly has won eight Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Music Awards, including his induction into their Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2001 the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA) listed the Top 30 Australian songs of all time, including Kelly’s “To Her Door”, and “Treaty”, written by Kelly and members of Yothu Yindi. Aside from “Treaty”, Kelly has written or co-written several songs on Indigenous Australian social issues and historical events. He has provided songs for many other artists, tailoring them to their particular vocal range. The album Women at the Well from 2002 had 14 female artists record his songs in tribute.

He continues to cross musical boundaries. Recent albums include the bluegrass-inspired Foggy Highway, the wide ranging double set, Ways & Means and Stolen Apples. The Triple J tribute album Before Too Long, released earlier this year, featuring John Butler, Missy Higgins, Megan Washington, Paul Dempsey, Ozi Batla and many others is evidence of his influence on generations of musicians.

Paul Kelly has recorded seventeen studio albums as well as several film soundtracks (Lantana and the Cannes 2006 highlight, Jindabyne) and live albums, in an influential career spanning more than thirty years. He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1997.

This album contains no booklet.