Kelman Press

Kelman - Is This How It Ends? / Postcards.

One of life’s great mysteries are Kelman, for several years now they have provided a gem in the making with each passing release, like a secret shared between the few their records have courted the imagination and admiration of a knowing minority beneath the glare and deserve of a wider audience. In that time they have quietly honed their craft to near perfection. First coming to our attention in their previous life as Baptiste via a dinky seven inch ‘a new career in a new town’ way back before the turn of the new decade - the Gooderham brothers and Co have proven their clinical niche at procuring pristinely turned aching pop with the power to crush both emotional and physically. The reference markers are as clear as the proverbial nose on your face - the velvets, the loft / weather prophets, galaxie 500, the pale saints, tinder sticks and lee hazlewood - all at various points and intervals grace as though like ghosts the frail tuneage served up by Kelman. ‘Is this how it ends?’ is in a word - exquisite. Fragile, defences down it reveals a sense of vulnerability rarely visited in pop, an almost resignation to fates - both hurting and introspective it builds slowly in stature and presence amazingly considering the finite resources they have to hand as to how they can craft such a gargantuan sound not only in terms of sound but more importantly - grandeur, all said and done it might just make a few of you feel the re-assuring need to dust down your old Orchids records for comparable solace. Of course - as per usual with these things - it’s the flipside that provides the cherry tipped icing. ’Postcards’ is measured, elegant, smokingly soulful and majestic. Combining resonating riffs that can trace their blood line directly back to Link Wray and nibbling ever so slightly at the quieter moments of the House of Love’s debut full length - that sense of Bickers uncoiling shimmers smouldering to act as a sympathetic backdrop to Chadwick’s bruised opines - one suspects that in the hands of someone with Joe Boyd’s delicately sensitive ear, Nigel Godrich’s ability to depersonalise and recalibrate an artists style and Jimmy Miller’s sense of hurtful soul then this would be unstoppable - for now it passes as just being merely magnificent.