Reviews

Artist:Kelly & Woolley
Album: Cuckoo Tree
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 13
Website: https://www.kellyandwoolley.co.uk/

Cambridgeshire based duo, Kelly & Woolley, have been playing together around the folk scene for over 12 years. They are multi-Instrumentalist and vocalist Matt Kelly and guitarist and vocalist Gary Woolley, and they have recently produced a fine album entitled ‘Cuckoo Tree’. They are both songwriters and have the ability to share their well-constructed narrative tales while drawing the listener in with their fine musicianship.

The opening track is the title track of the album. It was inspired by Gary’s childhood and the story of a cuckoo that used to frequent a tree in a field near his home. It’s a very clever song because as time goes by, the field disappears to housing, but Gary was able to draw upon the illness of Joni Mitchell, which coincided with the time of writing, to draw two things together. The words of the chorus “You don’t always know what you’ve got till it’s gone, Joni sang, the things I held so dearly, I forgot are hard won, now they’re gone” are so beautifully written and are surrounded by a lovely melody that holds those parallels together.

Track 2 takes a completely different direction, opening with an Appalachian style mandolin tune. Matt takes the vocal on ‘Exploitation Blues’ where he draws upon his experience as a teacher in the preceding years, and set himself a challenge to include as many rhymes as possible for ‘exploitation’. The result is a jaunty track with clever lyrics.

Like many recent album releases, some tracks on this one are also a consequence of the covid lockdown. In ‘Hands on The Window’, not only is this a song that they put together remotely, but tells the sad tale of an elderly couple, married for sixty years, who were not able to see each other due to care home restrictions. It’s a gentle and very sad song and the final verse sums it up beautifully “You and me we’re all alone, Hands on the window and a mobile phone, Is this our final stand, No longer holding hands” before a beautiful fiddle piece draws it to a close.

Onto track 4 , ‘Don’t Waste Your Breath’, and the guys pick up the pace a little with a more bluesey sounding song that they put together just to allow then to play live at sessions with a house band, before moving onto a beautiful and gentle instrumental piece entitled Joy’s Waltz, which was originally written by Matt for a funeral. ‘Lonely is as Lonely Was’, has a more country feel to it, which is not surprising as Gary wrote this after he had spent an afternoon listening to other country blues songwriters. The lyrics follow that style too with lots of references to bars, grief, loss, and breakup.

Track 7, ‘Let the Fire Die Back’ was created by Matt, with a very simple and repetitive refrain on which they both sing alternate lines as well as coming together in harmony. Although the lyrics are a little ambiguous, the listener can decide what the story is that the song is trying to tell, but in the lyric “She’s not coming home”, I think it somewhat speaks for itself. Matt’s fiddle takes centre stage in the song and shows great skill and musicianship, as well as his ability to write a song.

Paul Robeson eventually had his passport removed but not before creating a long association with the South Wales mining community. This song, simply called ‘Robson’ is a true story song beautifully and emotively written by Gary, and drawing upon the time when he lived in that area himself. It is a very special tribute and certainly highlights his ability, once again, to tell a tale through song.

Onto the next track ‘Going Down the Garden’, and it’s an “attempt to write a darkly humorous murder ballad narrated by a woman” Led by the mandolin, it’s a song full of metaphors and ambiguity with the listener given the chance to work out all those references and their true meaning.

‘Man on the Radio’ is one of the strongest songs on the album. It’s another of Gary’s story songs about a true event from about forty years ago, when we were all warned by ‘the man on the radio’ that the weather wouldn’t be a problem – when of course it became one. This has a catchy rhythm as well as strong lyrics and another lovely violin part from Matt.

As the album starts to draw to a close, we come to Address Book, a song that was based on one of Matts “weird dreams” he had during the pandemic. Taking the form of a slow, county style ballad, Matt takes the lead vocal on a gentle song which then leads us to the penultimate track, Man from Juarez, another song based on some truth and injustice about some high level deaths of young Hispanic men in Texas and the lack of respect given to them or their story.

Having weaved its way through ballads, melancholic tales and some beautiful folk tunes, the album finishes on a hugely upbeat, rhythmic and jolly number – ‘Mardi Gras Revisited’. Matt wrote this song in a Cajun style and the words are based “on a traditional Mardi Gras chant collected in Raymond François’s wonderful book of Cajun songs, Yé Yaille, Chére”. Its certainly a foot tapper.

Cuckoo Tree is a mighty fine piece of work from two very accomplished musicians and songwriters. Drawing upon their experience of a life in music, both individually and together, they have created a collection of songs and tunes in different styles and from different time periods, that take you on a journey from the depths of their creative minds to the sometimes harsh reality of humanity. This is an album that I would highly recommend adding to any collection.

Stuart Green

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