Reviewed on Thursday November 17
The pews fill up early at St. Stephen’s Uniting Church on Macquarie Street tonight. While the average passer-by would never think of this unassuming church as a concert venue – and there’s a significant irony in a show taking place directly across from the State Parliament – Paul Kelly and Charlie Owen’s performance is no artificial scenario. This is music in one of its formative settings, as natural as gospel in the Deep South, and the fact Kelly and Owen’s new album is dedicated to songs they’ve played at funerals only makes the location even more fitting.
Indeed, Kelly opens the show with a recital of the Shakespearean sonnet from which the record Death’s Dateless Night takes its name; he’s in somewhat of an obsessive period at the moment, having released his Seven Sonnets & A Song album as recently as April. Death’s Dateless Night can be considered a companion piece, and not just because two more of Shakespeare’s sonnets arrive later in the gig.The record is ostensibly about life and death, but it thrusts at something more extraordinary: we humans are mortal, Kelly is saying, but song lives on forever.
‘Hard Times’ opens both the album and the setlist, itself a 160-year-old composition that predates Tin Pan Alley, let alone anyone in this audience. The funereal burden of a song like L.J. Hill’s ‘Pretty Bird Tree’ suits the mood too, but it’s not all about the gloom, with bluegrass classic ‘Pallet On Your Floor’ setting off on a finger-picked jig.
Kelly is the master of ceremonies, but Owen brings his knack for multi-instrumentalism to the tabernacle. His slide guitar expressionism is matched only by his subtle illustrations on the keys. Also onstage is Kelly’s daughter Maddy, who provides backing vocals, occasional synth and an appropriate reminder of how great songs span generations.
They span cultures, too, with songs from Ireland, the Americas and indigenous Australia all featuring in Kelly and Owen’s set. Eventually, Kelly delivers some of his own: ‘Deeper Water’, ‘Meet Me In The Middle Of The Air’ and ‘They Thought I Was Asleep’ each feel somehow grander in this cavernous space.
But it’s Kelly’s mid-set tribute to Leonard Cohen that reiterates what’s really brought us here. “I had the pleasure of meeting the man who wrote this song,” Kelly says before ‘Bird On The Wire’. “Now he’s gone, but the songs aren’t.” And they’ll outlive the rest of us, too.
Photo: Steve Young
