Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Farewell Gig
Well, after 2 albums and a handful of singles we've decided to call it day in order to concentrate on Other Projects while still loitering in the general vicinity of "youth". We're going to finish off recording a Final Mini-Album of all the songs written since the last CD and have organised a Farewell Gig on Saturday 8th August at our favourite London venue, The Notting Hill Arts Club. We'll be playing a longer set than usual in order to play our favourite songs one last time & I'll be back with more news and a proper Last Word nearer the gig - but until then please note: this break-up is annoyingly amicable so please don't come along on the 8th expecting to see fists flying and guitars getting trashed and all that. Cheers.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Here Comes The Sadness
This was a song we recorded for I Felt My Sad Heart Soar but for aesthetic reasons didn't make the final track list. There's a review of it and a download here. Review reprinted below.
"Here comes the kicker: Kelman are still—after six years, two albums, and one monthly residence—loitering in the cloakroom. Recognition-wise, I mean. You know when you’re dragged out to a bar/dancefloor/mess hall and you spot the unpollenated wallflower? I swear, every fucking time, whenever you hear this band. As long as there’s cords in my throat and bones in my inner ear I will therefore keep campaigning for Kelman—at least until Wayne Gooderham either wins the pools or cracks and signs his band up to Orange Music Act. “Here comes the sadness now / Oh well done / There’s a stone / In my throat / There’s a stone caught in my throat,” he murmurs this time round, horns swooping for a lovely crescendo that batters the numb storyteller into abandon. It’s been a deep session; only a moment ago he’d confessed he “can’t connect nothing with nothing,” calmly wrenching like a seasoned barfly and so gutted he could’ve just passed a fish hook. As tomes go it’s a coke-line, chopping gently for its breathy lead-in before the crest blows you up to the clouds. But only for sixteen seconds—most things devilish are disposable, after all. It failed to fit the flow of their “last album”: http://www.cokemachineglow.com/feature/4177 but it’s got too much muscle for a b-side, so it’s been decided it gets the revamp for next year’s LP#3. By that time I expect the city to have awoken like in The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), eyes aglow for fresh Kelman. How long did it take Hubert Selby Jr. to get published? Seventeen years? Fuck. Here’s to 2026."
Cokemachine Glow
"Here comes the kicker: Kelman are still—after six years, two albums, and one monthly residence—loitering in the cloakroom. Recognition-wise, I mean. You know when you’re dragged out to a bar/dancefloor/mess hall and you spot the unpollenated wallflower? I swear, every fucking time, whenever you hear this band. As long as there’s cords in my throat and bones in my inner ear I will therefore keep campaigning for Kelman—at least until Wayne Gooderham either wins the pools or cracks and signs his band up to Orange Music Act. “Here comes the sadness now / Oh well done / There’s a stone / In my throat / There’s a stone caught in my throat,” he murmurs this time round, horns swooping for a lovely crescendo that batters the numb storyteller into abandon. It’s been a deep session; only a moment ago he’d confessed he “can’t connect nothing with nothing,” calmly wrenching like a seasoned barfly and so gutted he could’ve just passed a fish hook. As tomes go it’s a coke-line, chopping gently for its breathy lead-in before the crest blows you up to the clouds. But only for sixteen seconds—most things devilish are disposable, after all. It failed to fit the flow of their “last album”: http://www.cokemachineglow.com/feature/4177 but it’s got too much muscle for a b-side, so it’s been decided it gets the revamp for next year’s LP#3. By that time I expect the city to have awoken like in The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), eyes aglow for fresh Kelman. How long did it take Hubert Selby Jr. to get published? Seventeen years? Fuck. Here’s to 2026."
Cokemachine Glow
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Gramaphone Gig Review
Nice review of Thursday's Gramaphone gig here. As for the "magic track" mentioned in the review, thinking back over the set-list, can only assume that's the new song we debuted, The Roar of Left Unsaid. Personally, I thought I was ripping off the Beatle's Let It Be with a D - A - Bm - G chord sequence, but I could be wrong. Anyway, that's enough precious nit-picking from Muso's Corner, here's the review:
"First struck by the ace Doors-esque keyboards, then the laid back relaxed drawl from the singing guitar chap.
They seem easier on stage than the last mob, but the audience has thinned out a wee bit, more t-shirts than the becoated crowd earlier in the evening.
Very slow paced and more erm... musical, with a little of the driven shoegazer drone we love at Lost Music gigs. Soundman has his head on.
Ooh, absolutely magic track that rips the pounding of of B&S's Sleep the Clock Around, is that the trusty E-B-C#-A sequence, there have never been any crap songs that use those chords in the entire history of recorded music.
Broken string, slows the momentum of the set a wee bit, but a replacement guitar is provided by a helpful audience member.
A storming finish to the set too, I'm going to have to look up this Kelman on MySpace."
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Losing Today Album Review
A very flattering album review + career over-view from Losing Today:
"Ladies and Gentlemen - one of the most under appreciated bands on the scene today...Kelman a band of whom we fearfully suspect - and have said many a time in print previously - will be heralded long after they cease to be by a future generation and held with a comparable regard of musicians and ensembles alike who have ceaselessly spent their creative currency unloved, unrewarded and critically at odds with the times in which they exist (see Drake, Buckley, Wilson - as in Dennis - and Red House Painters being just four that role from the lips). This suspicion it seems is loosely echoed by a stolen quote printed on the inside of the liner sleeve to this their second full length -
‘you mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat’ [F Scott Fitzgerald ‘tender is the night’].
All at once bleak, bruised and brooding, the Kelman sound is a bitter sweet matrimony of intimacy and introspection, its textures scratched and torn all at once turbulent, tender, retiring and resigned.
It’s a crushed landscape of forlorn darkly withered romance, a place where optimism strains and barely succeeds amid the crashing hand of fate, a locale where in the incision of a consciously laid strum an evoking of something moving, mellow and monumental all at once tears through your defences with the abstract inconsistencies and abrupt sea changes of the English weather.
Kelman first came to our attention at the tail end of the last decade, then they were known simply as Baptiste. Their debut single ’a new career in a new town’ was one of those tentative first steps much deserving of being hailed as a classic first outing. It arrived on our door mat care of Cargo records along with another spiffing debut release by a group called Jumbo (whatever happened to them?) - who like Baptiste would for a short while receive unfettered attention whenever one of their releases dropped by our way. It was a sunny afternoon, a Friday as I recall, the parcel prized open the discs eagerly committed to the turntable and spun. While Jumbo’s had the obvious immediate pull, it was after all like a skewed Boo Radleys suffering a lysergic tipped meltdown, both Baptiste sides of their debuting platter where dappled with a resonating slow burn dynamic that ushered you to resist all activities, pull up close and savour the craft unfurling within. Several more singles followed and the sense of expectation that had flowered earlier soon began to change to one of frustration which would intensify and manifest itself on the bitterly beautiful debut full length ’nothing shines like a dying heart’.
Baptiste would inevitably cease to be though not before availing themselves of the near perfect ’postcards’ - which incidentally young folk features here having been plucked from the vaults and given a dusting down.
Rising from the ashes came Kelman, the sound was as before only stripped, more pronounced and sharper in its ability to hurt and humble, again a smattering of tasty turntable ear wear was dispatched to much acclaim with an album ’loneliness has kept us alive’ blending past glories with new. That said while more than able to hold its own against any competition you’d have chosen at the time to pit against it, it ultimately came across as rushed and without balance.
A year or two down the line and ’I felt my heart soar’ arrives, perhaps their most vulnerable and dare we say rounded opus to date. Nine tracks feature within, each inscribed with an exquisitely detailed bitter sweet symphonic cresting that between their grooves propels and opines an emotionally stirring pronunciation of reflection, distress and resignation. To say this set aches with an untold sorrow is to underplay its quietly magnetic majesty, both intimate and personal, ’I felt my sad heart soar’ as the title might well hint is a declaration of a soul damaged, informed and influenced (as advised by chief songwriter Wayne Gooderham) by Nick Cave and Velvet Underground, its clearly obvious that Kelman evoke a spiritual connection with both the Red House Painters and the Go Betweens, similarly dusted with that self same tender artistry that cut deep with a hollowing albeit humbling resonance, the craftsmanship at work here is one of measured elegance, the emotional epitaphs here exemplified by the likes of the aforementioned ‘postcards’ (not for the first time on this set sounding very much as though teased and plucked from the workbench of Guy Chadwick) and the opening ‘untethered’ (with its monochromatic solemness) are scratched and scarred by an underlying brooding rage that lingers throughout the set quietly lurking in the shadows with acute intent. The deftly sophisticated ‘Postcards’ a nugget resuscitated from the Baptiste days regales in the same artistic majesty as found softly snuggled amid the grooves of the House of Love’s debut full length while the seemingly darkly distant imagery courted on ‘is this how it ends?’ reveals once scratched of its dulled surface a faded hopeful romance eating at its core while simultaneously sharing a loose lineage with the Wedding Present c. ‘Sea Monsters’. Admirers of both Arab Strap and Decoration will do well to tune into ‘the pursued the pursuing the busy and the tired’ lushly coated as it is with a sullen and sodden storm eked scenery thats temptingly lit by a monologue delivery set atop a galloping rhythmic backdrop.
Its not all sorrowful surrender, when Kelman untangle themselves from the weights of emotional burdening elements of shimmering soulfulness come rippling to the surface, ‘commercial road’ both reflective and grey in appearance is cast with a mellowing burn, a master class of refined elegance marinating sublimely amid the coalescing braids of swiftly despatched cascading riff canters, Autumnal brass opines and swirls of 60’s styled keys (Procol Harum anyone?). Elsewhere there’s the brief but sweetly stirred Lee Hazlewood like ’kicking cans all the way home’ honed as it is upon 60’s kitchen sink atmospheres while the epic 8 minute blast of the simply magnificent ’NYE’ for us steals the show, an uplifting effervescent and regaling soul tipped brass beauty that to these ears had us imagining a youthful Pickled Egg era Go! Team overseeing some studio summit meeting between the much admired Clientele and Homescience. Absolutely stunning stuff.
Soured beauty never sounded so sweet."
Mark Barton, Losing Today.
"Ladies and Gentlemen - one of the most under appreciated bands on the scene today...Kelman a band of whom we fearfully suspect - and have said many a time in print previously - will be heralded long after they cease to be by a future generation and held with a comparable regard of musicians and ensembles alike who have ceaselessly spent their creative currency unloved, unrewarded and critically at odds with the times in which they exist (see Drake, Buckley, Wilson - as in Dennis - and Red House Painters being just four that role from the lips). This suspicion it seems is loosely echoed by a stolen quote printed on the inside of the liner sleeve to this their second full length -
‘you mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat’ [F Scott Fitzgerald ‘tender is the night’].
All at once bleak, bruised and brooding, the Kelman sound is a bitter sweet matrimony of intimacy and introspection, its textures scratched and torn all at once turbulent, tender, retiring and resigned.
It’s a crushed landscape of forlorn darkly withered romance, a place where optimism strains and barely succeeds amid the crashing hand of fate, a locale where in the incision of a consciously laid strum an evoking of something moving, mellow and monumental all at once tears through your defences with the abstract inconsistencies and abrupt sea changes of the English weather.
Kelman first came to our attention at the tail end of the last decade, then they were known simply as Baptiste. Their debut single ’a new career in a new town’ was one of those tentative first steps much deserving of being hailed as a classic first outing. It arrived on our door mat care of Cargo records along with another spiffing debut release by a group called Jumbo (whatever happened to them?) - who like Baptiste would for a short while receive unfettered attention whenever one of their releases dropped by our way. It was a sunny afternoon, a Friday as I recall, the parcel prized open the discs eagerly committed to the turntable and spun. While Jumbo’s had the obvious immediate pull, it was after all like a skewed Boo Radleys suffering a lysergic tipped meltdown, both Baptiste sides of their debuting platter where dappled with a resonating slow burn dynamic that ushered you to resist all activities, pull up close and savour the craft unfurling within. Several more singles followed and the sense of expectation that had flowered earlier soon began to change to one of frustration which would intensify and manifest itself on the bitterly beautiful debut full length ’nothing shines like a dying heart’.
Baptiste would inevitably cease to be though not before availing themselves of the near perfect ’postcards’ - which incidentally young folk features here having been plucked from the vaults and given a dusting down.
Rising from the ashes came Kelman, the sound was as before only stripped, more pronounced and sharper in its ability to hurt and humble, again a smattering of tasty turntable ear wear was dispatched to much acclaim with an album ’loneliness has kept us alive’ blending past glories with new. That said while more than able to hold its own against any competition you’d have chosen at the time to pit against it, it ultimately came across as rushed and without balance.
A year or two down the line and ’I felt my heart soar’ arrives, perhaps their most vulnerable and dare we say rounded opus to date. Nine tracks feature within, each inscribed with an exquisitely detailed bitter sweet symphonic cresting that between their grooves propels and opines an emotionally stirring pronunciation of reflection, distress and resignation. To say this set aches with an untold sorrow is to underplay its quietly magnetic majesty, both intimate and personal, ’I felt my sad heart soar’ as the title might well hint is a declaration of a soul damaged, informed and influenced (as advised by chief songwriter Wayne Gooderham) by Nick Cave and Velvet Underground, its clearly obvious that Kelman evoke a spiritual connection with both the Red House Painters and the Go Betweens, similarly dusted with that self same tender artistry that cut deep with a hollowing albeit humbling resonance, the craftsmanship at work here is one of measured elegance, the emotional epitaphs here exemplified by the likes of the aforementioned ‘postcards’ (not for the first time on this set sounding very much as though teased and plucked from the workbench of Guy Chadwick) and the opening ‘untethered’ (with its monochromatic solemness) are scratched and scarred by an underlying brooding rage that lingers throughout the set quietly lurking in the shadows with acute intent. The deftly sophisticated ‘Postcards’ a nugget resuscitated from the Baptiste days regales in the same artistic majesty as found softly snuggled amid the grooves of the House of Love’s debut full length while the seemingly darkly distant imagery courted on ‘is this how it ends?’ reveals once scratched of its dulled surface a faded hopeful romance eating at its core while simultaneously sharing a loose lineage with the Wedding Present c. ‘Sea Monsters’. Admirers of both Arab Strap and Decoration will do well to tune into ‘the pursued the pursuing the busy and the tired’ lushly coated as it is with a sullen and sodden storm eked scenery thats temptingly lit by a monologue delivery set atop a galloping rhythmic backdrop.
Its not all sorrowful surrender, when Kelman untangle themselves from the weights of emotional burdening elements of shimmering soulfulness come rippling to the surface, ‘commercial road’ both reflective and grey in appearance is cast with a mellowing burn, a master class of refined elegance marinating sublimely amid the coalescing braids of swiftly despatched cascading riff canters, Autumnal brass opines and swirls of 60’s styled keys (Procol Harum anyone?). Elsewhere there’s the brief but sweetly stirred Lee Hazlewood like ’kicking cans all the way home’ honed as it is upon 60’s kitchen sink atmospheres while the epic 8 minute blast of the simply magnificent ’NYE’ for us steals the show, an uplifting effervescent and regaling soul tipped brass beauty that to these ears had us imagining a youthful Pickled Egg era Go! Team overseeing some studio summit meeting between the much admired Clientele and Homescience. Absolutely stunning stuff.
Soured beauty never sounded so sweet."
Mark Barton, Losing Today.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Shut A Final Door
Just stumbled across this wee review of our download single, Shut A Final Door, in a Best of 2008 list at In Love With These Times, In Spite Of These Times. In at no.36 with a bullet. Very kind words. You can listen to it over on our Myspace site.
"36. Kelman, Shut A Final Door (Shifty Disco, download single)
One of their finest songs: invoking the blithe spirit of the Go-Betweens and then meandering beautifully to closure. One can't help feel it's the kind of song that Baptiste were always reaching out to get to, but that Wayne Gooderham had never quite touched. Until now."
"36. Kelman, Shut A Final Door (Shifty Disco, download single)
One of their finest songs: invoking the blithe spirit of the Go-Betweens and then meandering beautifully to closure. One can't help feel it's the kind of song that Baptiste were always reaching out to get to, but that Wayne Gooderham had never quite touched. Until now."
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Quietus Album Review
A nice review from the excellent Quietus website:
"I can’t remember any of the platitudes that I was offered, the first time I ever got my heart broken. How dare they try and understand the indescribable pain I was going through! There was no way they could possibly understand how I was feeling! The one thing I do remember someone saying to me was this though: “You’ll miss it when it’s gone you know.” I’d never heard such utter rubbish! One; there was no way this apocalyptic pain was ever going to end and two; even if it did, I sure as hell wouldn’t mourn its passing.
They were, of course, completely right. The stages of getting over heartbreak are remarkably similar to the stages of getting over bereavement; the final furlongs are preparing to return to a normal life. It is time to say goodbye to this heightened state of feeling you have been experiencing. Hopefully forever. Probably not though.
Kelman are a three piece headed by Wayne Gooderham (vocals, guitars), his brother Marc (drums, percussion) and Paul Ragsdale (keyboards, melodic) who savour the sadness lustily and this album is remorsefully enjoyable. It feels like your ex-girlfriend coming round to your house but just to pick up her juicer. She looks fantastic but she can’t stop as she’s got to go round to her new boyfriend’s house to make him cocktails. You know how gut-churningly bad you’ll feel later but for now there’s always a cup of tea drank in strained and aching silence.
The band sound like they are past masters at leafing through old photos while smoking, supping pints in shell shocked silence fingering well worn letters, trying not to think of how long this might last. They near tearfully compose ex-lover’s rock. In amongst the stripped down and morose indie that nods to a love for Tindersticks, Gene, Vauxhal and I and Belle and Sebastian is the funny and sad (naturally) story of love and loss in North London ‘The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy & The Tired’ which is narrated rather than sang and the sombre and almost funereal ‘Untethered’.
But near the end of heartbreak comes hope for the future again, and the album ends on the uplifting ‘NYE’ and the empathetic and accepting ‘You’re Still Everything to Me’. As the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on the inner sleeve of the album says: “You mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat.”"
John Doran, The Quietus
"I can’t remember any of the platitudes that I was offered, the first time I ever got my heart broken. How dare they try and understand the indescribable pain I was going through! There was no way they could possibly understand how I was feeling! The one thing I do remember someone saying to me was this though: “You’ll miss it when it’s gone you know.” I’d never heard such utter rubbish! One; there was no way this apocalyptic pain was ever going to end and two; even if it did, I sure as hell wouldn’t mourn its passing.
They were, of course, completely right. The stages of getting over heartbreak are remarkably similar to the stages of getting over bereavement; the final furlongs are preparing to return to a normal life. It is time to say goodbye to this heightened state of feeling you have been experiencing. Hopefully forever. Probably not though.
Kelman are a three piece headed by Wayne Gooderham (vocals, guitars), his brother Marc (drums, percussion) and Paul Ragsdale (keyboards, melodic) who savour the sadness lustily and this album is remorsefully enjoyable. It feels like your ex-girlfriend coming round to your house but just to pick up her juicer. She looks fantastic but she can’t stop as she’s got to go round to her new boyfriend’s house to make him cocktails. You know how gut-churningly bad you’ll feel later but for now there’s always a cup of tea drank in strained and aching silence.
The band sound like they are past masters at leafing through old photos while smoking, supping pints in shell shocked silence fingering well worn letters, trying not to think of how long this might last. They near tearfully compose ex-lover’s rock. In amongst the stripped down and morose indie that nods to a love for Tindersticks, Gene, Vauxhal and I and Belle and Sebastian is the funny and sad (naturally) story of love and loss in North London ‘The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy & The Tired’ which is narrated rather than sang and the sombre and almost funereal ‘Untethered’.
But near the end of heartbreak comes hope for the future again, and the album ends on the uplifting ‘NYE’ and the empathetic and accepting ‘You’re Still Everything to Me’. As the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on the inner sleeve of the album says: “You mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat.”"
John Doran, The Quietus
Saturday, 20 December 2008
End Of Year Award
We were chuffed to notice that I Felt My Sad Heart Soar has been awarded the "Best GPS For Drowsy Singletons, 02:00:00 - 02:59:59, 01.01.09 Award" by Cokemachine Glow. We're not sure how many other contenders there were for this title, but seeing as the runner up was "falling asleep in an alley with your fly unzipped" it's probably best we don't ask. Many, many thanks. And that piece in full...
"Time to come clean: I’m a gambler. I live for that buzz when I ink in a guessing slip, eyes on the screen so the world can acknowledge I was a genius all along. “Balls to Robert Redford—here’s the real Horse Whisperer,” they’ll say, disappearing at the crumple of paper in case my rider burns and crashes. Prostitutes and crank just rob me, and where’s the fun in that? Betting is damned reincarnation. It strips and kicks you into the street, leaving you free to coo your way back in like the wife-beater armed with his daffodils. Round Two, and this time you’ll definitely knock that bitch through the wall. Definitely and without fail.
So, imagine my indignation when I realised that, despite all the stolen winks and tip-mongering, Kelman had again failed to get picked up by anyone weighty enough to make a fuss this year. I’m starting to think that frontman Wayne Gooderham must smell, that every time the marketing men call him in to discuss a support slot he starts growling and eating the mug trees. When he said yes to an interview in July just before his band dropped their I Felt My Sad Heart Soar sophomore, I thought my ship had come in to long-awaited tickertape for sure. This was the gamble I could make; the roll I could hang my paycheck, heirlooms, and kidneys on, clean up and walk away in Armani. I’d wangled a promo for the record some weeks hence, you see, and had been so blown back by its delicate integrity I had to lock myself away for the weekend. It was like I’d rediscovered opiates, I shit you not. I just knew that this time Kelman were going to make it—couldn’t not with an album this toothy. People were 100% going to cotton on to the fact that England’s most amicable songwriter was stuck temping at London Underground, paying his way through studio time with a sideline in stolen Oyster cards. The Kelman debut, Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive (2006), would fly off the shelves like Luftwaffe as folk woke up to their lovesick hardihood, and I Felt My Sad Heart Soar would be duly crowned The Holy Bible (1994) for anyone still clinging to courtesy.
But no: the ship came in and again ran quietly aground. It was a case of same shit, same day as Kelman attracted a whopping three salutes for their self-released masterpiece, leaving the remaining 497 pressings to collect lint under the composer’s empty captain’s bed. Gooderham himself disclosed that he would’ve called it quits long ago if it weren’t for the eight or nine worshippers who override his business sense, egging him on like Burgess Meredith did during the montage shots in Rocky. He knows he’s a contender, and the line he sings on “Commercial Road” about “Your gentle fists pummeling my defences down” takes on new meaning in retrospect, well beyond its physical context of feeling oneself thaw in the company of a cute stranger. There are flashes of victory in Kelman’s kitchen-sink balladry, with the happily fragile “Kicking Cans All The Way Home” seeing the shy guy lead a girl back to his pad for a rummage and perhaps something more. The beer and rain are bringing out his hooligan tendencies but the girl’s going nowhere, firmly by his side as neighbours cough at the rattling tins and soft electrics. Like life, though, it’s followed by the doom and poisoned Wurlitzers of “Postcards,” where Mr Ex-Hooligan is left spent and dreaming of a sharp medicinal exit. “Untethered” repeats the story again, except this time our crusty protagonist wobbles home on some hungover sunshine. He’s tired and he wants to go to bed. Alone.
Kelman’s pulling power lies in their resolve, and it’s this that quadruples the lifespan of what’s already a truly penetrating record. If humans couldn’t cope with repeated failure then we’d all be staring at sockets with our belts round our biceps, lips turning blue with shame and semi-dissolved heroin. Kelman get this (check the F Scott Fitzgerald quote on the sleeve art) and also know that, in real life, there isn’t a Burgess Meredith from Rocky to get you out of beer and rain. That magnificent flying muscle that’s set up in the title of the record? Yes, it exists, and “NYE” is where it finally gets some air, creeping up on the sound barrier as it clears the eight-minute mark. Kelman can do epic as easy as people escape into daydreams, and when Gooderham whispers “And I’m meaning every pick-up line / For the first time in my life / I'm doing the best that I can,” you can feel the belief in his eyes.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot when 2009 is uncurling, here’s the marker buoy that just might save you if you’re alone on a liner full of even numbers. The fearsome and feathery guitar hushes of I Felt My Sad Heart Soar form the year’s most explosive damp Squib, and Gooderham deserves a touch from the Queen for being the poet laureate of the publically sheepish. Believe me, I’m not writing about this shit for my health or my conscience—I’m writing about it for yours. The second Kelman record glows like volcano vein brimstone, and is without doubt one that the people with sore and stapled-up hearts need on standby for pangs of solitude. So, for fuck’s sake, someone out there do the decent thing and get this music circulating. Sign them or face the consequences. Sign them sign them sign them sign them sign them sign them sign them."
George Bass, Cokemachine Glow
"Time to come clean: I’m a gambler. I live for that buzz when I ink in a guessing slip, eyes on the screen so the world can acknowledge I was a genius all along. “Balls to Robert Redford—here’s the real Horse Whisperer,” they’ll say, disappearing at the crumple of paper in case my rider burns and crashes. Prostitutes and crank just rob me, and where’s the fun in that? Betting is damned reincarnation. It strips and kicks you into the street, leaving you free to coo your way back in like the wife-beater armed with his daffodils. Round Two, and this time you’ll definitely knock that bitch through the wall. Definitely and without fail.
So, imagine my indignation when I realised that, despite all the stolen winks and tip-mongering, Kelman had again failed to get picked up by anyone weighty enough to make a fuss this year. I’m starting to think that frontman Wayne Gooderham must smell, that every time the marketing men call him in to discuss a support slot he starts growling and eating the mug trees. When he said yes to an interview in July just before his band dropped their I Felt My Sad Heart Soar sophomore, I thought my ship had come in to long-awaited tickertape for sure. This was the gamble I could make; the roll I could hang my paycheck, heirlooms, and kidneys on, clean up and walk away in Armani. I’d wangled a promo for the record some weeks hence, you see, and had been so blown back by its delicate integrity I had to lock myself away for the weekend. It was like I’d rediscovered opiates, I shit you not. I just knew that this time Kelman were going to make it—couldn’t not with an album this toothy. People were 100% going to cotton on to the fact that England’s most amicable songwriter was stuck temping at London Underground, paying his way through studio time with a sideline in stolen Oyster cards. The Kelman debut, Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive (2006), would fly off the shelves like Luftwaffe as folk woke up to their lovesick hardihood, and I Felt My Sad Heart Soar would be duly crowned The Holy Bible (1994) for anyone still clinging to courtesy.
But no: the ship came in and again ran quietly aground. It was a case of same shit, same day as Kelman attracted a whopping three salutes for their self-released masterpiece, leaving the remaining 497 pressings to collect lint under the composer’s empty captain’s bed. Gooderham himself disclosed that he would’ve called it quits long ago if it weren’t for the eight or nine worshippers who override his business sense, egging him on like Burgess Meredith did during the montage shots in Rocky. He knows he’s a contender, and the line he sings on “Commercial Road” about “Your gentle fists pummeling my defences down” takes on new meaning in retrospect, well beyond its physical context of feeling oneself thaw in the company of a cute stranger. There are flashes of victory in Kelman’s kitchen-sink balladry, with the happily fragile “Kicking Cans All The Way Home” seeing the shy guy lead a girl back to his pad for a rummage and perhaps something more. The beer and rain are bringing out his hooligan tendencies but the girl’s going nowhere, firmly by his side as neighbours cough at the rattling tins and soft electrics. Like life, though, it’s followed by the doom and poisoned Wurlitzers of “Postcards,” where Mr Ex-Hooligan is left spent and dreaming of a sharp medicinal exit. “Untethered” repeats the story again, except this time our crusty protagonist wobbles home on some hungover sunshine. He’s tired and he wants to go to bed. Alone.
Kelman’s pulling power lies in their resolve, and it’s this that quadruples the lifespan of what’s already a truly penetrating record. If humans couldn’t cope with repeated failure then we’d all be staring at sockets with our belts round our biceps, lips turning blue with shame and semi-dissolved heroin. Kelman get this (check the F Scott Fitzgerald quote on the sleeve art) and also know that, in real life, there isn’t a Burgess Meredith from Rocky to get you out of beer and rain. That magnificent flying muscle that’s set up in the title of the record? Yes, it exists, and “NYE” is where it finally gets some air, creeping up on the sound barrier as it clears the eight-minute mark. Kelman can do epic as easy as people escape into daydreams, and when Gooderham whispers “And I’m meaning every pick-up line / For the first time in my life / I'm doing the best that I can,” you can feel the belief in his eyes.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot when 2009 is uncurling, here’s the marker buoy that just might save you if you’re alone on a liner full of even numbers. The fearsome and feathery guitar hushes of I Felt My Sad Heart Soar form the year’s most explosive damp Squib, and Gooderham deserves a touch from the Queen for being the poet laureate of the publically sheepish. Believe me, I’m not writing about this shit for my health or my conscience—I’m writing about it for yours. The second Kelman record glows like volcano vein brimstone, and is without doubt one that the people with sore and stapled-up hearts need on standby for pangs of solitude. So, for fuck’s sake, someone out there do the decent thing and get this music circulating. Sign them or face the consequences. Sign them sign them sign them sign them sign them sign them sign them."
George Bass, Cokemachine Glow
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