Melbournite Dan Kelly has gone from a dream to a fantastic reality in the form of a new album that turns his fun 'n freewheeling tales into a pop tour de force. 2ser Subscribers can win a copy of this album all week on Breakfast, Overdrive and Static.
Dan Kelly is no stranger to an epic tale of adventure – in fact, he specializes in this very thing. His vivid three-minute guitar pop jams are epic tales, distilled with essence of tropicalia, bottled into woozy underwater escapist fantasies and coloured with ecological dread, then shaken with his unmistakeable wit. But the story behind Dan Kelly’s Dream itself is an epic tale – from Daylesford to Sydney then London, from delusion to discovery, folk to metal, luddite to technocrat…
Lets cast an eye over the past six years to when Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males emerged in 2004 with a debut album, Sing The Tabloid Blues. Since then, Dan Kelly has notched up five ARIA nominations, counted the likes of Gareth Liddiard (Drones), Christian Strybosch (ex-Drones), Tom Carlyon (The Devastations), Dan Luscombe (Blackeyed Susans/Drones), Lewis Boyes (St Helens) and engineer/producer/musician Aaron Cupples as Alpha Males band mates. Second album Drowning in the Fountain of Youth was deemed Album Of The Year by Inpress magazine and nominated for the JJJ Award. He has toured the world many times solo and playing guitar for Paul Kelly. He’s has Neil Young’s nod of approval, with the now infamous ‘Drunk On Election Night’ tune from the Pirate Radio EP which Neil included on his Living With War/Songs of The Times project.
Dan Kelly has been a solo performer, a touring guitarist for Augie March and NZ chanteuse Bic Runga, and a trio with the Ukeladies, whose legacy is ‘The SUV Song’, among a great many Dan Kelly songs making his trademark confused and slightly rude stand against ecological travesties.
As Dan admits, “ A lot of my songs are environmental freak-out songs. Public transport snooze driven psychedelic dreams and songs about trying to escape, but realizing that all the same problems are still there wherever you end up. The planet is decaying, and I’ve been personally decaying along with it and trying to figure out my way through writing all these songs. Dan Kelly’s Dream is the end of a trilogy, of me not knowing what I’m doing, through to now. That’s why it ends with ‘Grown Up Solutions’, perhaps I see a light at that end of some kind of tunnel, but probably not. Either way I got some new songs happening…”
