The new track ‘The Sea Shepherd Cook’ from Australian troubadour Dan Kelly is a gorgeous dreamy and eloquent water-logged tale soaked in melancholy and drenched with a whimsical melody.
The track veritably skims along the waters with a nautical lilt but leavened with a good-natured observations on nutrition, friendships and desire, with singer Jess Ribeiro adding a ray of sunshine, a golden filigree, to Kelly’s humorous and witty observational style.
Kelly says of the track:
I made up this one after an introduction to night kayaking, Tasmanian whiskey and homemade patè by the great Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan. Wandering through the Hobart docks the next morning, grimly trying to work this melange through brainial, muscular and digestive systems, I spied the good ship ‘Steve Irwin’ at berth.
On the dock by the gangplank was a blackboard chalked with a request for donated ingredients for the galley, featuring a list of the most convoluted vegan products I had ever seen. It was a veritable cornucopia of complications from nutritional yeast flakes to rain-activated rice. I wondered to myself, always on the lookout for an escape from reality, whether a job as a Sea Shepherd cook could be my thing.
The righteous glamour, the Anthony kudos I would receive from my Environmental Science 1993 alumni, the beard and the skivvy; would it be worth the sea sickness, the juggling of food allergies, the dank passive-aggressive talk among the crew after another bowl of failed Ottolenghi vegan chowder? I decided it easier to write myself the job in song.
Fittingly inspired by the aquatic climes and wild southern shores of Tasmania, the track is accompanied by a video that comes straight from Antarctica, to which Hobart, capital of Tasmania is the gateway.
Directed by auteur, magician and philosopher Sunny Leunig and shot by Justin Oleyar, ‘The Sea Shepherd Cook’ features a beautiful array of Southern Ocean images donated by the CSIRO Hobart Division and also features Ribeiro, played by an animated Albatross.
This is a sparkling track comes off Kelly’s album ‘GOLDFEELS’ (out via Golden Point Records via Metropolitan Groove Merchants) and engineered by multi-instrumentalist Dan Luscombe (Courtney Barnett, The Drones, Amyl And The Sniffers).
The album also features a panoply of Australia’s most respected musicians: Tropical Fuck Storm’s Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel, Jess Ribeiro, Amanda Roff (Harmony, Time For Dreams, Don Walker), Ben Woolley (Marlon Williams), award-winning saxophonist Julien Wilson, Gus Agars (Marlon Williams, Robyn Hitchcock), Peter Luscombe (Paul Kelly, The Black Sorrows) and Tom Lyncolgn (Harmony, Nation Blue).
You can catch Kelly on the road with his band Regional Crisis – details below:
Fri Jan 31 Archies Creek Hotel Archies Creek VIC
With Special Guest Meghan Maike
Sun Feb 16 Riverboats Festival Echuca VIC
www.riverboatsmusic.com.au
Sat Apr 5 George Lane St Kilda VIC
With guest TBC
Sat Apr 12 The Tote Melbourne VIC
Supporting Kim Salmon
