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.