★★★☆☆
Why is it that great artists of a certain age always decide to release themed albums that are – let’s face it – a bit pretentious?
Sting had his lute album. Paul McCartney did a latin oratorio in four movements. Lou Reed’s 19th solo album drew from the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe.
It’s with a muttered “typical” that we find out Paul Kelly, once of The Dots and The Messengers, has released an album based on Shakespeare’s sonnets. Seven Sonnets & A Song (actually six sonnets, a song from Twelfth Night and another by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries) marks the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, but isn’t as groan-inducing as you might think.
Actually, it’s really good. Kelly and friends leave the words untouched and put them to a range of musical styles. It works. ‘Sonnet 138’, the one that describes the author’s testing relationship with his promiscuous mistress, is brought to life as a 3am smoky jazz club jam. ‘Sonnet 73’ becomes a Bob Dylan-esque protest song. ‘My True Love Hath My Heart’, by Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney, is revived as a ‘Jolene’-like country lament.
It can be difficult to be moved by Shakespeare on the page. Put to song, centuries later, all the meaning and emotion of his work is brought to life again.
Seven Sonnets & A SongbyPaul Kellyis available through Gawd Aggie/Universaland through his online store.
