Kelman

Farewell Gig

2009-07-01T15:19:00.002+01:00

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.

Here Comes The Sadness

2009-03-26T14:23:00.002Z

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

Gramaphone Gig Review

2009-02-15T11:30:00.007Z

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."

Losing Today Album Review

2009-02-01T11:25:00.003Z

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.

Shut A Final Door

2009-01-25T10:27:00.004Z

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."

Quietus Album Review

2009-01-06T09:03:00.001Z

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

End Of Year Award

2008-12-20T13:25:00.007Z

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

The Where Are They Now? File

2008-11-26T09:39:00.002Z

Mine and Marc's old band, Baptiste, was recently remembered in a Soundtrack Of Our Lives piece written by Pennyblack editor, John Clarkson. Not sure if this is the right place to post it or not, but seems a shame to let it pass by unacknowledged and so, for those interested, here it is:

"I first heard Baptiste in the late summer of 2000 in the then flat of Pennyblackmusic webmaster and co-founder Richard Banks. In those early fledgling days Pennyblackmusic still had its shop, and both the website and this magazine were still very much in its infancy. Both Baptiste’s debut single, ‘A New Career in a New Town’, and its follow-up, ‘The Quiet Times’, each of which had come in limited editions of 500 in 7” vinyl, had after a slow start begun to sell well in the shop. We must have sold 40 or 50 copies of each, which for us were always remarkable sales.At first Baptiste didn’t have much of an immediate impression on me, but something must have stuck because back in Edinburgh from seeing Richard in London I asked him to send me copies of the two singles and in the coming weeks I kept returning to both of them. Three of four listens of each later and I was completely hooked by both their Velvet Underground/Go Betweens guitar atmospherics and the confessional nature and bittersweet honesty of songwriter Wayne Gooderham’s lyrics.Towards the end of that year I set up the first of what has been five Pennyblackmusic interviews to date with Wayne, two with Baptiste and three with his current band Kelman. I spoke to him on the phone on a Wednesday night to arrange the interview, and then two nights later on the Friday again on the phone we did the interview itself.Perhaps in that initial phone call I gave Wayne the wrong impression, that, rather than like his band being another part of the indie sector struggling to survive against apathy, we were a lot bigger than we were. I can’t remember. After talking to me poor Wayne, who had not done many interviews at that stage, was, however, hit by a severe blast of nerves. He stopped off at the pub on the way home from work on the night of the interview to give himself some Dutch courage. One drink became several, and by the time he got back to the house to take my second phone call he was completely plastered.It was in many ways the interview from hell, one which was punctured by long passages of ramble, but there were other briefer moments in which Wayne showed total articulacy. I wasn’t, however, angry with him. I was flattered and secretly somewhat thrilled. Here was someone whose music I really admired, and he had been so worried about talking to Pennyblackmusic and me in particular that he had gone out and got hammered. It gave us at a time in which we were all at Pennyblackmusic HQ plagued with doubts about our worth and if what we were doing was of any real value at all a massive and much needed injection of confidence. I wrote up the interview over that Christmas, used the good parts, Wayne liked it and it remains all these years on one of my favourite interviews of time. In the eight years since then I have had quite a lot to do with Wayne who I met for the first time next year both socially and also musically. I often see him when I am down from Edinburgh and in London where he too is based for a drink. I have seen him perform several times, and been to Uptight, the monthly club, he runs with his brother and Baptiste and Kelman’s drummer Marc. I also met both Anthony Strutt and Dominic Simpson through Baptiste. Anthony had published another Baptiste interviews in his then fanzine, ‘Independent Underground Sound’, and I got in touch with him for research purposes. Dominic, another Baptiste fan, got in touch with me after reading one of Wayne’s interviews on the site. Both have ended up regular contributors to the magazine. Many of the other writers at Pennyblackmusic subsequently got into Baptiste as well. In 2002 they became the closest thing we have ever had to an in-house band, with one writer or another providing a live review every other month. It must have all been a bit overwhelming and embarrassing, but Wayne, Marc and the rest of Baptiste, however, took it in good spirits. In January of 2003 Baptiste appeared second on the bill at our first Pennyblackmusic Bands Night at the London Spitz. Their set concluded in front of one of the Bands Night’s biggest audiences with a rare outing for ‘Icarus’, the B side to a ‘New Career in a New Town’, and my favourite of all their songs. Pennyblackmusic writer Ben Howarth still says that their set was the best performance that he has ever seen at a Bands Night. It was to be one of their last performances, as six or so weeks later Baptiste quietly imploded. Although we had already invited them back to play our second Bands Night that April, Wayne swears that it was nothing to do with us.I am grateful to Wayne for all of that, grateful too for him after Baptiste’s demise for continuing to make challenging and enthralling music as he has done since with Kelman, who have released two albums, 2005’s ‘Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive’ and this year’s ‘I Felt My Sad Heart Soar’. For getting drunk that night and helping to give us faith in ourselves when we needed it the most, I, however, am also appreciative. It was one of the first times that I felt we were getting somewhere. 10 years on from starting we’re still here, and both Baptiste and Kelman have had a large part to play in that."

Solo Gig Review

2008-11-24T10:15:00.003Z

A very kind review of my recent solo spot from Soundsxp. We'll be back as a full band in the New Year.

"For some family reason, Kelman the band can’t play tonight so singer/ guitarist Wayne Gooderham elects to perform a solo set. He spends time apologising for not having drums and keyboards backing him but really it’s unnecessary; while it would be good to hear full band versions, songs like ‘Commercial Road’ speak for themselves as examples of glorious gloom-pop, however they’re presented. Speaking to him afterwards (another advantage of those small gigs) I was surprised that he was so matter of fact about his creations; if I’d been responsible for creating the atmospheric Galaxie 500-like soundscapes that are on the latest Kelman platter I Felt My Sad Heart Soar, I’d be performing cartwheels..." Soundsxp.

NYE released on Shifty Disco

2008-11-03T08:59:00.002Z

The third and final instalment of our Shifty Disco Single Club releases - the epic (for us) NYE - is available now and can be bought as a download from here. NYE is currently streaming over on our Myspace site if interested parties fancy a listen before buying. And, of course, all three tracks can be found on our recently-released 2nd album, I Felt My Sad Heart Soar. Fanatics should please go here to buy a copy.

The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy & The Tired released on Shifty Disco

2008-10-02T18:17:00.002+01:00

The second of our download-only releases is available now from Shifty Disco. The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy & The Tired, our "spoken-word Krautrocker", is currently streaming over on our Myspace site and can be bought now from here. The third and final instalment of our Shifty Disco Download EP will be available at the end of October.

Pennyblack Album Review + Interview

2008-09-15T08:32:00.004+01:00

Album review below, for the full interview please visit here

"It becomes clear over the course of Kelman’s second album, ‘I Felt My Sad Heart Soar’, that the London-based trio of Wayne Gooderham (vocals, guitar), Marc Gooderham (drums) and Paul Ragsdale (keyboards, melodica) are building up to something.The songs on ‘I Felt My Sad Heart Soar’ dip and soar between quiet and loud, and weave from anything between two and over five minutes in length. They are, but before then they, however, have a lot else to offer first.Kelman’s music merges the dark, haunting melodies and atmospherics of acts like the Velvet Underground, the Go Betweens and Galaxie 500 with, in songwriter Wayne Gooderham’s lyrics, the sparse, dirty realism of prose writers such as Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller and the band’s namesake, James Kelman. Gooderham’s world will always be perhaps a monochrome shade of grey. Yet in contrast to ‘Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive’, Kelman’s 2006 bleak debut album, the tone of ‘I Felt My Sad Heart Soar’ is one more of wary optimism. That first album found Gooderham lurching through a sequence of drunken escapades, one-night stands and other short-lived romances. On this new album, his relationships are often still brief. A need for privacy and a want not to be tied down remains unchanged. Yet, while before he was prepared to accept crushing disappointments and an existentially lonely existence in exchange for a series of short, intoxicating highs, this has now been replaced by an increased need for other human warmth and contact. "I want to hear your voice in the dark", he admits, in what could be a mantra for the whole record, early on the first song 'Untethered', his vocals set against a backdrop of Ragsdale's slowly uncoiling, eerie Hammer Horror soundtrack-style synthezisers. The next track, recent download only single 'Is This How It Ends ?', is a surging, jangling garage rocker, which merges discordant guitar work from Gooderham and fiery drumming from his brother with see sawing synths. Like 'Untethered', it is another story of a relationship at an end, yet, in contrast to many of the songs on 'Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive' in which Gooderham seemed fairly relieved that the romance was finished, his tone here is of both sentimental longing and some regret. "When you got dressed and came back to bed/it was the most beautiful thing that you ever did", he sings at its dramatic conclusion explaining why the relationship has come to an end. "And we can’t have that time again/and so I’m ready now/and this is how it ends."‘Commercial Road’ is a gentle ballad with light brushes of guitar, tingling keyboards and soft swipes of electronic brass and perhaps captures the paradox of the album best. "But on Commercial Road / you lent against my shoulder / and I felt my sad heart soar / like never before", croons Gooderham about a new love on the line of the song which gives the album its title. Yet while at one level his girlfriend's action delights him, at another it makes him feel uneasy. "Oh Lord, I need a drink" he sings a few seconds later, before adding with stark, nervous honesty, hesitant at revealing or giving anymore of himself to her, "I need something to help me hide all the things that you don’t know."‘The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy and The Tired’ is brighter, a frenzied, gloriously speeding spoken word rocker, which, taking snippets from several of Gooderham’s short stories and amalgamating them together, describes a happy, long desired for sexual coupling coming together. The reflective ‘Kicking Cans All the Way Home’ is also more upbeat ("aching with joy, hungover and bruised"), telling of another new relationship starting out at the end of a long drunken evening and on the night the clocks change. On ‘Postcards’, an old unrecorded song of the Gooderhams’ previous band Baptiste, nerves have, however, got in the way again ("I am too scared to fly in case you hear my heart beating"), while 'Shut a Final Door', another break-up song, finds Gooderham raising "a glass to lost friends". The tone of both is, however, elegiac, rather than mournful. "I love you" sings Gooderham over and over to his lost love at the conclusion of the sofly distorted 'Postcards', while 'Shut a Final Door', a song that develops into one of the most up tempo in sound on the album, finishes with a gorgeous flurry of Ragsdale's chiming keyboards.The final outcome of the album, after this succession of solidly powerful songs, is splendid. ‘NYE’ is an eight and a half minute long epic which begins with Wayne Gooderham and Ragsdale’s tingling guitar and keyboards being levitated slowly upwards by Marc’s crashes of cymbal and occasional pumps of brass. Telling of a drink and drug-addled New Year’s Eye in which promises are broken as soon as they have been made, Wayne Gooderham’s vocals do not kick in until long after the two minute mark, and the song eventually concludes in a great escalating rush of psychedelic noise and distortion. ”Won’t you stay with me tonight ?”,Gooderham howls in its chorus, no longer prepared or wanting to be alone.Kelman could have finished it there, but they have one last song and trick, ‘You’re Still Everything to Me’, a brief and pastoral two minute long comedown track, which has Gooderham singing the title over and over again, and merging his lightly buzzing guitar with softly surging mock electro strings, brings the album to a graceful conclusion.‘I Felt My Sad Heart Soar’ is magnificent, an album of stunning contrasts and textures, which in its awkward embrace of the world teeters over onto the side of hope and optimism. With this second album, Kelman have ascended to new peaks. " Pennyblack

Soundsxp Album Review

2008-09-10T09:59:00.002+01:00

"If, as they say, misery loves company, it deserves your full attention in this case. Kelman’s second album has all the glass-half-empty mournfulness of Tindersticks mixed with the romantic hopefulness of Grant McLennan. It’s a powerful formula when combined with Velvet Underground-styled crepuscular organ drones, a driving beat and ringing guitars (it’s very easy to imagine John Cale intoning the prose story of ‘The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy and The Tired’). These are curiously compelling tales of urban life, in all its pained, bruised and broken beauty. Even though there’s a suggestion of finality and disaster in many of Wayne Gooderham’s melancholic titles (though fewer than on the powerfully doomy debut Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive) songs like ‘Shut A Final Door’ and the krautrocking ‘NYE’ develop into something powerfully exciting. They may have named themselves after a Scottish author but the one that comes to mind is Samuel Beckett; their lyrics seem to exemplify his line: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”. But that describes the mood only: the music is a brilliant success, the sound of a cult in the making. Don’t miss out when the dark side is calling."
Ged M, Soundsxp

Shut A Final Door download release on Shifty Disco

2008-08-28T13:48:00.008+01:00

To celebrate the release of our forthcoming 2nd album (due Sept 15th), we've teamed up with the good people at Shifty Disco to release a track from the album on the last Friday of each month from August to October as part of the Shifty Disco Download Club.

The first download-only single comes out this Friday 29th August, in the form of live favourite, Shut A Final Door (also currently streaming on our Myspace page). Future releases are scheduled for Sept 26th andOctober 31st.

To download Shut A Final Door please visit here.

Interview On Coke Machine Glow

2008-08-16T06:06:00.003+01:00

I recently gave an interview to international webzine, Coke Machine Glow. We'll me moving all press for the new album over to the Press page of this site in the near future, but for now interested parties can read the interview here.

I Felt My Sad Heart Soar Sampler Review

2008-04-06T22:23:00.002+01:00

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

2008-04-02T08:05:00.002+01:00

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

2008-03-28T07:15:00.002Z

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."

And from Losingtoday.com...

2008-02-29T11:39:00.006Z

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

2008-02-28T15:47:00.007Z

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

2008-02-19T11:22:00.002Z

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...

New Look Website

2008-02-18T11:57:00.002Z

Well, here it is. We've blogged out. Which potentially means we'll be updating this site a lot more frequently than the old site with new news as soon as it comes in. For starters, the Gallery and the Discography pages have been updated. Hardly headline-grabbing stuff I know, but it's early days isn't it. Watch this space...

Site Reconstruction

2008-02-13T10:07:00.002Z

Hello. Please bear with us while our site undergoes a long-overdue complete overhaul in preparation for promotional duties for our forthcoming second album. It'll be back back back and better than ever within the week. Of this we are almost faintly confident. Apologies for any inconvenience.