Paula Kelley - A Bit of Everything

  by John Clarkson

published: 17 / 12 / 2001

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Review

Paula Kelley is one of those acts who has never quite met with the recognition her talent deserves. An outstandingly gifted musician and performer, Kelley is a leading force on the independent scene in her native Boston, but outside the perimeters of the North Eastern States she is less well known, and beyond America barely at all. Kelley's first success ironically came abroad with the early nineties shoegazing group The Drop Nineteens who were a cult hit in Europe. She appeared playing guitar and on vocals on their 1992 debut album 'Delaware', which to date has been the most internationally successful of her records. By the time of The Drop Nineteens' second and final album 'National Coma' the following year, Kelley, wishing to concentrate upon writing her own material, had dropped out of the band. She formed firstly an under-rated grunge act, Hot Rod, who released one album 'Speed ! Danger ! Death !' in 1993 , and then, when that band folded, another group Boy Wonder in 1996. Boy Wonder split up amicably in January of this year and combined together the classic sixties pop harmonies and arrangements of The Beach Boys, The Turtles and the early pre-Night Fever Bee Gees with contemporary indie guitar sounds. There was an album 'Wonder Wear' in 1997 and the group also recorded, in a different line-up, a 5 track EP 'Break the Spell etc' last year. Kelley has now gone solo, and has spent most of this year working on an album 'Everything', which will be out in the Autumn and which is due to be released on former Boy Wonder guitarist Aaron Tap's own label Jacques Ass. As a prelude to it, she and Tap, both to garner press reaction and also to give loyal fans a taste of what is to come, have put out a six track EP, the appropriately-named and limited-to-one hundred-copies 'A Bit of Everything'. 'A Bit of Everything' finds Kelley's fascination with the sixties continuing to evolve and to develop . The distortion effects that were a part of her previous work are now all gone, and the slick harmonies and tightly woven vocal arrangements that have been filled out to take their place are sharper and even more expansive. More than just another sixties pastiche though, 'A Bit of Everything', as its title suggests, really does prove to be a little bit of all things-the old and the familiar, but also the new, the different and the experimental. The title track 'Everything' and the follow-up second track 'Nothing' perhaps have the most in common with the old Boy Wonder sound, balancing sparky and catchy up-tempo tunes against spiky, self-doubting lyrics. On the former Kelley mourns that "Everything I wanted had a way of slipping by", while on the latter she questions a boyfriend who is "never quite with me." The atmospheric and haunting 'Left and Right' is a reworking of one of Kelley's first songs as a solo artist, and, a reprised rarity originally recorded in 1998 while she was still in Boy Wonder for a Boston bands charity compilation CD 'A Place to Call Home', is a plaintive fifties-style love song. 'Ordinary Mind', which has Kelley hoping to be the best love of her new love's life,and the acoustic and acidic closing number 'Lucie' ("Without the devil you know, you'd be sad and alone/Without the devil below, she's just some girl that I know.") meanwhile both break new territory. Both are sugar-drenched, paced-down ballads, and find Kelley convincingly discovering a softer and gentler side to her sound. The EP's other track 'The Light Under the Door' is an up-beat, frantic rocker on which Tap co-wrote the lyrics and which also features him on joint vocals, and has Kelley searching and looking for and gradually finding inspiration and fulfillment. By the sound of the six tracks on this CD, Kelley seems to have found her own "light under the door" and plenty of both on this EP. 'A Bit of Everything' is an enjoyable, thoroughly pleasurable experience and has her looking back on her versatile past, but also finding new ground in the present and looking tantalisingly towards the future. With songs as strong as these,'Everything' is an exciting prospect.

Track Listing:-

1 Everything
2 Nothing
3 The Light Under The Door
4 Ordinary Mind
5 Left and Right
6 Lucie