LOVE LETTERS

Alan Kelly, the man behind The Last Post, has just released his debut album Love Lost on Bright Star Recordings. Soft-spoken and endearingly shy, he is responsible for one of the most beautiful records I ve ever heard eloquent, powerful, fragile, heart-breaking. Brian Wilson, Gram Parsons and the Cocteau Twins all come to mind.

And so, the first question is where have you been all my life?
I was in a band called In Motion for about four or five years, from the age of about fifteen until twenty-something. We put out a single and an album on Dead Elvis. That ended about six years ago. Since then he s been busy writing what he describes as unrequited love songs .
As Last Post, I did two singles on my own label (Via Dolorosa) about a year and a half ago, A Light To Live By and You Belong Here . I put them in a few shops, made a video, then had no money at all afterwards cos it cost a lot to do, but I kept writing songs. Around that time, I met a guy called Johnny Davis who runs Bright Star Recordings. He d heard the singles, liked them and wanted to put them out. I said, Wait a little while and you can have a whole album.
Love Lost is the result a dream of intricately-woven melodies, rich vocal harmonies, and songs which say the simplest but most significant things like I know I shouldn t love you, but I still do ( Silence Seems To Say ).
It took about nine months to write and was recorded quite quickly, in about eight or nine days altogether. Although the Last Post is not a band as such, Alan got a rake of friends in to play and sing on the record, including members of Capratone, Joan of Arse, the Dudley Corporation and Andrew Lyster from the Asteroids. Alan has reciprocated the compliment by singing on The Asteroids new EP Moonlight Songs for Beginners.
We don t rehearse as a band. I have my own studio set up where I do full-scale arrangements on the songs. When people first hear the demo s its usually quite obvious how they are meant to be done. They come in and play, then leave.
Alan will find it amusing to see how people react to Love Lost, The album has some secret reference points which only I know about. I m interested to see whether people get it right or not.
When I was younger I got into Felt, Television, Cocteau Twins and stuff like that. I rarely listen to new music. In the last few years I ve really only listened to older albums and spend most of my time in second hand record shops. Actually, after two or three years of never going to gigs I went to two in the last week Emmy Lou Harris and Low who were pure class.
Speaking of which, a certain Emmy Lou Harrison lends her grevious angel voice to a number of tracks, including the opener Until the Heart Gives way . Alan explains that it s a pseudonym for a singer from another band who wishes to remain unidentified, although it s not a very tough one to guess.
As for his part in the whole D.I.Y. scene in Dublin, he says I was inspired by people like Joan of Arse and the Redneck Manifesto, who put out their own records. It s quite easy to do, but it does take a bit of money. I did it through a company in the Czech Republic, which is one of the cheapest places. VAT and transport costs aside, it s okay if you do it in small enough quantities. Of course, you ll never, ever make any money out of it. Ever!
Although there are no singles from Love Lost, there is a video for I Believe. Its some old sixties super-8 footage an American friend gave to me of his parents prom night. There will also be a small-scale release of an EP with the two previous Last Post singles, probably in February. I m hoping to get another album out in a year or so.
The possibility of a live outing is remote, he confesses. I m concentrating on writing new stuff now and I don t want to interrupt myself. If I was going to get a band together I d have to write a new set of songs especially for that. These songs are really too ornate to do live, or even to strip back and play acoustically.
Ornate is a good word to describe the loving care that has gone into the arrangements. Harmony is of total importance, Alan says unequivocally, and goes on to describe how he works carefully on small blocks of harmonies in isolation, before moving on to
work on the rest. Every songwriter
has their different method. I tend to use all the methods sometimes all in one song.
Are you a hopeless romantic, I inquire? I wouldn t say that, he counters, unconvincingly. But you do write a lot of love songs? Love songs, yeah, but very hurt kind of love songs. Unrequited love.
The worst (and best) kind.

The Last Post s Love Lost is out now on Bright Star Recordings. The Last Post website: http://indigo.ie/~dolorosa/