Robin Kelly – Orewa Heartbeat
URL: www.robinkelly.co.nz/Musician.html
Orewa Heartbeat is the fifth studio release from New Zealander Robin Kelly, a doctor working in the field of holistic/alternative medicine who also commands immense respect as an author and public speaker. He hasn’t written the album’s thirteen songs, however, to promote any sort of agenda beyond sharing his heart with the world at large. The songs on Orewa Heartbeat do so with immense stylishness and a confidence born from the knowledge of what he wants to say and how to say it. There’s a few love songs scattered throughout the album’s running order and this oldest of subjects floods the release with warm sunlight balancing out nicely against the rare shadowy moments cropping up in the songwriting. His adaptation of Americana themed styles might seem unlikely from a New Zealand born singer and songwriter, but that’s a limited musical imagination, because Kelly tackles this type of music with every bit of the same authenticity and verve as any American.
It’s deeply satisfying to hear someone working in this tradition, no matter their country of origin, who undercuts the stereotype that musical material like this should strike a dramatic, unhappy note or that all singer/songwriters should be tortured artists. There’s a lot of warmth on Orewa Heartbeat and it comes across from the outset. “Waiting for Me Too” has a streak of melancholy providing an undercurrent for the song, but there’s more a sense of breaking through that streak and finding a new day that comes from the often lush, classically influenced arrangement. “Truthseeker (Song for Pete)” is one of Orewa Heartbeat’s highlights thanks to a tasteful balance achieved between strands of classical influence positioned against Kelly’s acoustic guitar playing. The strings present giving the song its classical leanings adds a lot of color, but this song would have succeeded even without that addition. There’s a palpable Cat Stevens influence in this number that longtime fans of the style will likely admire.
The unvarnished vulnerability Kelly shows listeners on one of the album’s few outright ballads, “I Apologize”, makes for one of Orewa Heartbeat’s more memorable moments and accomplishes it with a well-honed artistry we just don’t hear often anymore. Kelly is clearly intent on crafting music capable of timelessness. The same languid Americana elegance we hear in other Orewa Heartbeat songs comes across, perhaps in its most refined and considered form, on the song “Would It Be Enough for You?” and much of its mood is attributable to the generous spirit inhabiting the song’s lyrical content. Kelly really embodies that spirit with one of the release’s best singing performances It’s much closer to a straight forward folk song in the singer/songwriter vein and it’s difficult, if not impossible, for listeners to be unimpressed by his achingly rendered lyrics. The same folky vibe pervades a lightly rueful love song entitled “My Secret” but, when Kelly conjures those inklings of ruefulness, it’s more about the chagrin of wasted time more than any other sort of despair. Much like the opener, “Where Are You Now?” is a quasi-classical chamber piece with an accompanying Kelly vocal. It’s another compelling lyric as well, never overwritten, that questions where God’s presence is in a world often bubbling with chaos and loss. The immense heart underlying these songs makes Orewa Heartbeat one of the most intensely human musical experiences in recent memory.
ANGHAMI: play.anghami.com/artist/2086491
Michael Saulman