Paul Kelly, Credit: Edd Schlaghecke
Paul Kelly performed at Qudos Bank Arena, on Gadigal land, in Sydney, on Saturday 30 August.
Music alone doesn’t tend to fill arenas. To make a space like Qudos Bank Arena feel packed to the rafters, you need “a thing.” Not necessarily some element of theatricality or pyrotechnics. But some degree of gimmick, of story. A space that large will swamp a song. But it won’t swamp a song that arrives nestled in narrative.
So what’s Paul Kelly’s story? If he has a narrative, it’s not exactly the cleanest one – over the course of his career, the man has transformed from larrikin troubadour into an outsider artist who is somehow very famous. He’s a musician who has always delighted in following his own specific passions, whether that be recording an album with lyrics provided by William Shakespeare, or building a sort of Paul Kelly interconnected sonic universe (his latest single, “Rita Wrote A Letter,” is the sequel to one of his biggest hits, “How To Make Gravy”).
And all this has happened, somehow, to increasing popularity, rather than diminishing returns. While other performers of his generation and stature are seemingly happy to turn in covers of their past hits, performing a parody of their own glory days, Kelly keeps doing his own thing, and listeners continue to accumulate. Not exactly the kind of career trajectory that one can use as set dressing in Qudos.
But the genius of Kelly’s show in that venue – one of the biggest shows of his career – is how it made that fractal quality its entire point. My partner described the gig as Taylor Swift’s Eras tour for ABC radio listeners, which is exactly what it felt like.
Just as Swift made her transition across styles the focus of her performance, so too did Kelly: hopping from full band numbers to smaller, quieter songs; telling stories and introducing friends with all the relaxed ease and energy of someone guiding an audience through their entire back catalogue.
Kelly is one of the most unassuming, inspired artists this country has – hyperbole that only sits strangely because the music itself is so simple. “From Little Things Big Things Grow,” a political ballad that somehow manages to feel unbelievably human in a genre that too often settles for aphorism, has grown only more powerful over the years. Performed towards the end of the set, it felt like it expanded past the arena, and started to touch the sky.
“Dumb Things” was a blast of unhinged menace. “Going To The River With Dad,” a recent Kelly song that has more energy and youthful vigour than the debut songs of other acts, cut through the space like a knife.
If there was a standout, it might have been “They Thought I Was Asleep,” a serve of pure emotional terrorism that had at least three people around me choking on audible tears. But the gig was a triumph from its rapturous start to its intimate end, which saw Kelly and his band gathered around the microphone to perform “Meet Me In The Middle of the Air” a capella.
The only real question that remained was, where does he go from here? Given it’s Kelly, we can rest in the knowledge that the next step will be a surprise, whatever it is.
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