IT has been four years since Dan Kelly last unleashed his vivid brand of thinking-person's rock on the public with memorable 2006 album Drowning in the Fountain of Youth. So where has he been?
Speaking from his house in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray, Kelly said he had been at a crossroads when his former band The Alpha Males broke up after the last album cycle.
“So I travelled and joined other bands and tried to figure out where I was headed,” Kelly said.
“I spent a lot of time playing guitar for Paul Kelly (his uncle) and touring the world with him.”
Kelly decided that striking out as a solo artist was the way forward and started the creative journey that culminated in new album Dan Kelly’s Dream, a remarkable set of 12 songs with all of Kelly's trademark lyrical humour and verbosity, though never far away is the serious theme of impending environmental apocalypse that spans the album.
Kelly said he had never been a quick writer, but the writing process for Dan Kelly's Dream had plodded along even by his standards.
“I think I forgot how to write songs and had to relearn,” Kelly said.
“It was tortuous.”
A glance at the new album's track list hints at Kelly's unique creative sensibility and wildly imaginative knack for storytelling.
Song titles include Bindi Irwin Apocalypse Jam (inspired by Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic underwater epic 1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be), while The Decommissioner tells of an rock band that goes on an eco-terrorism spree blowing up coal-burning power stations.
Kelly said while the theme of environmental apocalypse could threaten to be a bummer, the tone of the music itself was positive.
“I'm not negative about it; it's just all there and I'm not going to pretend it's not happening, so I'm interested and also scared,” he said.
“But I'm also trying to go through life without being morose about it, so I've written a few songs about how does one deal with this,” he said. Do you take drugs, go and bomb a power station or run away to a tropical island?
“Often the best songs have got sad lyrics with happy music - maybe it's a Ray Davies/Kinks thing - I've always found him kind of charming and cynical, but I feel good listening to it.”
Dan Kelly will play at the Rosemount Hotel, North Perth, on September 24, at the Wave Rock Weekender, Hyden, on September 25 and Mojo's, North Fremantle, on September 26.