When is a holiday album not a holiday album? When it’s Paul Kelly’s Christmas Train, conceived and executed by the Australian folk hero as a means to commemorate the emotional
Even when played by a full-tilt electric band, Paul Kelly's best songs capture the detail of those moments in life that stop us in our tracks to consider how we will change (or already have) as a result of those moments. In the intimate, spare setting of Spring and Fall, the sound mirrors the lyrics, and each resonates off the other to vivid effect.
Based on the range of material included in Songs From the South Vol. 1&2, not to mention the uniformly brilliant production throughout the two discs, it’s deeply confounding to consider that Paul Kelly remains sadly unknown outside his homeland of Australia. “”Before Too Long” and “”Look So Fine, Feel So Low” suggest how fully-formed he was as a writer and performer when he began recording. Then as now, he and his work transcend easy categorization or comparisons.
