Nick Kelly is perhaps the most “visual” songwriter Ireland has ever produced. From the cider, whiskey and penguins evoked by The Fat Lady Sings to the line about “ducks strutting like lawyers” on his solo debut, Between Trapezes, Kelly has always had a way with words that nails an entire mood in one killer image.
Take the centrepiece of his new album, Break America, part homage to the Big Apple, with “pretty tattooed New York girls queuing round the block”; part gruelling travelogue of trying to make it musically in the land of opportunity where he drives, “two days straight to play to 20 drunks, half of them are under age and eight of them are punks”.
Before that, album opener ‘Resolution’ is a raucous statement of intent. The song erupts into a frenetic and raw guitar-fest. As initial salvos go, it’s a whopper.
It’s quickly followed up with recent single ‘Nothing Left To Do But To Dance’, which is the kind of bittersweet yet rousing four minutes Kelly has made his own since the heady heyday of The Fat Lady Sings; it’s part melancholic meditation, part barndance. Similarly, the countrified twang of ‘Save Pluto’ has a toe-tapping chorus that comes as something of a surprise, even after multiple listens; while the closing ‘Hold On To Your Soul’ is a life-affirming call to remain true to yourself, which all sounds a little twee, but in Kelly’s capable hands becomes something joyous.
‘Bitter Batter Bee’ switches from aching funereal dirge to gripping martial drum tattoo without asking for permission, and drags the listener along in its wake, featuring superb sticksmithery from one-time Frames man Dave Hingerty, and strident cello from Kim Porcelli, along with some brilliant Deliverance-style banjo. The wonderful ‘Sam And Andre’ is about the bizarre but true fact that Samuel Beckett used to drive his neighbour’s kid, André Roussimoff, who later became the late great wrestler André the Giant, to school in France, when he was too big to fit on the school bus.
A resounding reaffirmation of the power of the song, Loads is one of the strongest albums you’ll hear this year.
Out Now.