Paul Kelly has just released his new album, Fever Longing Still, featuring the single “Harpoon to the Heart”. You can catch him on tour across Australia and New Zealand this August and September.
Reflecting on the album, Kelly shared: “For close to fifty years I’ve written mostly love songs. I never know what I’m doing until I’m in the middle of it but, looking back, it seems this record is an attempt to present a lot of those kinds of love songs into one forty minute album.
“Urgent love, catastrophic love, deluded love, clear-eyed love, complicated love, the beginning of love, the end of love; love gone wrong, love pretty right, love of contradiction, love of revenge, love of clan, love between parents and children. There’s even a love song to sleep, written with my friend Billy Miller, for all the insomniacs out there.
“My songs come slowly, one by one. Each time I write a song it feels like I’m starting again. Each new one seems to have no relation to the one before.
“I’ve been playing with my band – or variants of it – for many years. With Bill (bass) and Dan (guitar), for over twenty. With Pete (drums), over thirty. Ash (guitar)and Cameron (keyboards), with whom I started playing seventeen years ago, are the ‘newbies’. Combined, they are a living, breathing encyclopedia of 20th and 21st century music. I think of them as explorers, looking to make each song its own new world.
“We are anti-coherence, anti-pattern, anti-order! Our philosophy’s eclectic! We always want to make each song as different as possible to the last. We know that our own limitations and natural bents will make the record ‘coherent’ without us even trying. This set of songs gives my boon companions full range to lay out their palettes, get messy and paint!
“I always knew Houndstooth Dress would be the first song. Where else would it go? It’s a party starter and gives a hint of how we work – in the moment, trying to catch something, pushing and pulling. And I always knew Going To The River With Dad, a song of meditation, sweetness and memory, would be the last. The Alpha and Omega of the album. The trick, or in other words, the fun part, was how to navigate from first to last, stopping, like Odysseus, at different islands and countries and having many strange adventures along the way.
“Play this record loud or soft, at a party or for the quiet listening two. Play your favourite bits or play it all straight through. Play it with the ones you love true.”
Rolling Stone AU/NZ praised the album as proof that “one of Australia’s greatest living singer-songwriters still has plenty of gold left to mine.”
This August and September, Kelly embarks on his biggest shows yet across nine arenas in Australia and New Zealand – his only live shows for 2025. He’ll be joined by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit in Australia, with Fanny Lumsden opening the Australian shows and Reb Fountain joining him in New Zealand. For dates and ticketing info, see here.
Paul Kelly’s Fever Longing Still is out now.
