How many blues albums come with lyrics in the liner notes? Almost none at all, but that doesn't really bother me.
When I listen to the blues, it's the music, not the words, that move me—it's a primordially stirring musical genre. As much as people criticize the sameness of 12-bar blues, every time I hear the shift up to the second line, the music draws me in, and by the time we get to the turnaround, I'm ready for the next twelve frames. In a blues song, all we need are a few evocative lyrics that the music then completes. In the blues, the lyrics are a few pencil sketches, and the music does the rest. "I can't quit you baby, but I've got to put you down for a while," turns the key, and the music drives you home.
Folk and rock, especially outside the billboard charts, is really about words. Lyrics make the statement, and music gives the accent.
The liner notes to Michigan native George Kelly's Lucid Intervals come with lyrics. Lucid Intervals, strictly speaking, is not a blues album, but it's a great album: a record of bluesy, heartland rock with serious songwriting aspiration. Intervals is Kelly's first album, and it serves notice that he's after big game. The opening track, "Get What U Pay For" (a sidenote plea: 4 the love of Pete, why don't U write out your song titles?), wearily recounts the price you pay to get to the top, and Kelly's slide guitar adds a dimension of resignation to the song's unfolding. The following tracks prove Kelly adept at love-lost balladry ("Bad memories of days gone by/Waste the present, God knows why"), but the album truly finds its groove midway through. "Bluesman" is the only 12-bar number on the album, and it's an effortless, gritty blues. The following cut, "Otis Spann," sounds like the long-lost cousin of "Sultans of Swing," as Kelly bemoans that the Muddy Waters pianist is "buried in an unmarked grave." The final three album tracks, "Love Interest," "Desert Island," and "Pyrrhic Victory" demonstrate just how powerful a base of blues and jazz can be to writing pop songs; the jazzy arrangements here elevate the songs far above typical AOR fare, and the lyrics hold their own. Try to imagine what Dire Straits would sound like if Mark Knopfler played slide guitar, and you're on the right track.
Over the course of Lucid Intervals, we've heard, in addition to your basic band lineup, horns, congas, accordion, flute, Uillean pipes, and bodhran—and none of it sounds forced or scattershot.
Vocally, Kelly possesses a worn croon that suits his music well. He's equally comfortable singing slower and faster songs. The course edge to his voice imparts credibility to his song subjects, but the gentle vocal baseline that he sets insures that his welcome doesn't wear out by album's end. On the slide guitar, Kelly combines dexterity and buttery tone with a knack for knowing when and when not to play. Finally, in his songwriting he tackles themes of loss, frustration, aging, and other heavy subjects with aplomb. Lucid Intervals is a serious album from a serious talent, and satisfying from beginning to end.
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