I Felt My Sad Heart Soar Sampler Review

From Kittenpaiting:

"This is a three-track sampler for Kelman’s rather excellently titled forthcoming second album and a very pleasing thing it is indeed. The band have built on their melancholic, alcoholic tear-stained sound, gently prising it open to let in wisps of fresh air. They say they’re aiming for a rawer sound, closer to their live excursions (which can be heart-wrestingly, wrist-snappingly wonderful) whilst keeping the warmth and intimacy of their debut. And jings! I think they’ve achieved this.Kelman have warmth and intimacy for sure, at times you feel embarrassed to be eavesdropping on Wayne Gooderham’s thoughts. Take former single ’Is This How It Ends?’ reprieved here with its shiveryness and blood pumping in the ears rumble and the words ‘On the brink of something big. I’ve never known failure like this…’ You want to blush and look away, but icicle-drops of glockenspiel drip into a swell of guitar and organ and you cling on until seascape cymbals shimmer you towards a big finish, rushing impulsively over the edge.‘Commercial Road’ sees Kelman in almost-optimistic-mood-shocker! It takes some song-writing ability to write anything of beauty about this particular East End street, but here is an affecting song filled with soft ripples of delight. A gentler, more soothing sound with twinkly bits and brass tones (you can’t be down when the brass kicks in) and those words, "I felt my sad heart soar". Hang on though, what’s this? "Oh Lord I need a drink". Oh dear.There’s a lot of drunkenness in Kelman’s songs, and it seems like the new album will see more booze-fuelled long dark nights of the soul. This is, of course, no bad thing, as Kelman are quiet masters of the art. ‘Shut A Final Door’ sees Mr Gooderham "drunk in charge of a wired jealous heart" sliding through Tindersticks territory with cello and piano until everything cracks wide open on a jubilant organ riff and redemptively strummed guitar. Sounds to make your heart soar coming soon. Can’t wait!"

New Album Preview Review

From Indie MP3: "You may remember Tom writing about Kelman’s self-released double A-side single, Is This How It Ends?/Postcards, back in September last year. Since then the London group have been working on their second album, to be called 'I Felt My Sad Heart Soar', and have sent us a sampler of three tracks from it. In fact, one of the featured songs is the previous single, Is This How It Ends? It’s probably the strongest of the three, with the soaring instrumentation and Wayne Gooderham’s world-weary voice combining beautifully. The lovelorn, melancholy lyrics are reminiscent of Tindersticks’ kitchen-sink dramas, or Arab Strap in their less tawdry moments.The pace slows slightly on the second track, Commercial Road. It ticks along nicely and Gooderham’s plaintive tones are genuinely affecting, but at closer to four minutes than three it risks outstaying its welcome slightly.Third track, Shut A Final Door, is another sad song with themes of ending and loss. The music is spare most of the way through, with a cello adding to the doleful twilight feel. It’s the kind of song that would make a good album ender, in a similar vein to Butcher Boy’s ‘Days Like These Will Be The Death Of Me’. These songs suggest that Kelman’s forthcoming album will be worth watching out for. Providing they vary the pace and avoid turning it into a depressing plod, it has the potential to be something special."

Three Track Sampler Review

Another just in from Losingtoday.com... "It’s now becoming a tad ridiculous that each and every review we do that features a Kelman release or recording is blotted by our bewildered distress that no one has come seeking this lot. Their debut full length - the sweetly cracked and hurting ‘loneliness has kept us alive’ deservedly won plaudits aplenty from the more considered elements of the underground press while simultaneously finding itself bending the ear of the evening airwave torchbearers Messrs Stephens and Kennedy. Within that aching platter Kelman excelled in their ability to meter out in equal portions the sparse with the stately, the exquisite with the emotional and the sensitive with the scarred. Embracing the lost art of crafting indelibly beautiful scores that once peeled revealed a hurtfully bruised core, their sweet interpretation of the silken shade wearing 60’s styled sophisticated pop can be found lying between at an unspecified point between Lee Hazlewood and the Velvets, the sounds sparsely woven are principally soulful though shot through with a cripplingly repelling detachment that weaves with mercurial magnificence between the hopeful and hopeless. Looming large on the horizon Kelman’s second full length entitled ‘I felt my sad heart soar’ is in the can awaiting release, this teaser CD features three priceless cuts from those sessions including ’is this how it ends?’ (their last single) which for those of you who take note on such matters was put under the critical microscope at missive 127. Tragic, tormented and tantalising this trio offers a glimpse of the rich tapestry sewn by Kelman - the reference points undoubtedly indebted to the aforementioned Hazlewood and the Velvets with the added tilt of the Go Betweens and Tindersticks, while of today’s breed perhaps only Clientelle spin vaguely near to the opining orbit. As to the tracks on show, ‘I this how it ends?’ is a magnificently numbing tyrant of beautifully bruised bravado that stirs from a sparse detail to assume a crushed and hurtfully wounded clarity, stature and presence. Elegantly arresting ‘Commercial Road’ - delicately daubed with a beguiling pastoral hue this cutie is a hitherto more upbeat proposition that deliciously shimmers and caresses with the same spectral charm of classic era House of Love while the parting ’shut a final door’ which we do recall hearing in its rough cut stages a little while back - still sounds to us like something approaching unreal and magnificent as well as still recalling for the best part those much missed dudes the Flaming Stars. Like we said previously the masters of pain killer pop. A tormented treat."

The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy And The Tired

As our second album - I Felt My Sad Heart Soar - nears completion, we're continuing to rotate new material over on our Myspace site. This month we've replaced Untethered with a rough mix of The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy And The Tired, which is currently streaming here. We'll be previewing a different new track in about a month...

And from Losingtoday.com...

Just stumbled across this review of one of our new album tracks recently streaming over on our Myspace page. So, can blog will blog:

"...bugger me with a big stick the enigmatic and ever so crucial Kelman are busying themselves putting the finishing touches to their as yet untitled second full length due to do record rack damage sometime around March next year [Hmmm. Approx]. As a sneak peak they’ve posted a rough cut of ‘shut a final door’ - a majestic tear stained beauty wrapped in delicate sheens of shimmer like strums that stab and punch holes in your defences in pretty much the same way as was once the forte of the Flaming Stars though here solemnly peering from the bottom of a hopeless glass of sorrow - undeniably aching stuff - Tindersticks, Wedding Present and Galaxie 500 fans be warned this will seduce, romance, caress and inevitably floor you. A bewitching drunken dandy from the arbiters of pain killer pop."
Mark Barton, Losingtoday

Album Preview Review

The three track album sampler has started to generate some press, which we'll be posting here as it comes in before moving it to the Press page of the site at a later date. This first review is from the God Is In The TV webzine (& completists please note: earlier promos had a slightly different track listing to the one we're currently sending out):

"Coming home to a Jiffy Bag in practitioner's handwriting lying butter-side down on your doormat can mean only one thing: Wayne Gooderham and his Merry Celeste Men are once again under starters' orders, ready to save the world from the Morrissey-for-project-managers outfits who threaten to overthrow the indie mantle. Kelman, whose debut album Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive was a highly original and critically ignored essay on life for solitary stoics, seem to exist as a kind of Sterling Morrison riff on Schrödinger's Cat - locked away in some tamper-proof strongbox to keep themselves safe from fleas and castration. The new pickings they demo here show they're ready to rescue a genre still mourning the death of Arab Strap, with Gooderham, as ever, remaining as quietly resigned to disaster as a Hereford down-and-out on Selection Week. Commercial Road takes him to the city, and sees its humble narrator stagger sadly down London's most clogged inlet, all the while sending signals to the girl forever in his blind spot. 'Your gentle fists pummeling my defences down/And so with every blow/I say goodbye to pieces of me I never want you to know', he croons in his breathy trill, accompanied by some of the most carefree electric piano you'll find outside of a Life On Mars swingers' party. It's instances such as these that Kelman capture so well - that fleeting flash of resolution hidden in nights of centrifugal stupor; something that makes you beg the barstaff for a Biro. As the bells gong and doormen start to fidget, organs, guitars and cellos come together on the plodding Shut A Final Door, while Kicking Cans All The Way Home, a dayglo dirge dented with dreamy dejection set the night the clocks go back, feels more quaintly English than realising Meridian South East have forgotten to bleep the bloody bits out of a Bank Holiday Bond film. Lyrically, things are definitely well on course for the upcoming second album, and anyone missing the boat this time is depriving themselves of an on-board meal so good you want to cloche it. If music be the food of love, pass the sauce."
George Bass, God Is In The TV

3 Track Album Sampler

We've finished recording our new album and are now in the final stages of mixing. As I write, 3-track album samplers are winging their way across the UK (& beyond) to various interested parties. If you'd define yourself as an Interested Party then feel free to drop me a line at wayne@kelmanband.com and we'll get a copy out to you. As for the album proper, we're aiming for a Spring release, with more details (track listing, cover artwork, etc) to follow nearer the time. But for now we've started streaming finished tracks on a rotational basis over on our Myspace site. Currently playing is album-opener Untethered. We'll be swopping this for another new track in a week or so. Whatever we get mixed this Thurs basically...