Paul Kelly announces new album Seventy, and the 7NEWS verdict on How To Make Gravy sequel Rita Wrote A Letter

7NEWS

3 days ago

A fortnight out from his biggest-ever tour of Australia and New Zealand, legendary singer-songwriter Paul Kelly has announced details of his 30th album.
Seventy, reflecting the age its author turned in January, will be released on November 7, just over a year after his last album Fever Longing Still. Its first single — the mooted How To Make Gravy sequel Rita Wrote a Letter — was released on Thursday morning along with a video directed by Imogen McCluskey.
The sequel, teased by Kelly this week in a funeral notice in a Melbourne newspaper, comes almost 30 years after listeners first met the characters Dan, Rita and Joe as the latter spends his first Christmas behind bars. How To Make Gravy, released in 1996, was last year adapted into a feature film and has transcended its modest origins to become a festive classic certified four times platinum by ARIA and last month voted the ninth best Australian song of all time by Triple J listeners.
'I've been mulling over the idea of a sequel to How To Make Gravy from Rita's point of view for quite some time,' Kelly explained.
'About five years ago I wrote down the words, 'Rita wrote a letter,' and thought, 'There's my title.'
'I scratched away intermittently and fruitlessly for several years but never got very far until [nephew and bandmate] Dan Kelly sent me a recording of something he'd written on piano with a rough melody over the top. The words started rolling after that.
'As often happens, they took me by surprise. You could say the song took a dark turn but to my mind it's a black comedy. A ghost story. You hear Rita's voice loud and clear, but Joe talks even more. I couldn't shut him up!'
Kelly and his band will hit some of Australia's biggest venues later this month, kicking off at Perth's RAC Arena on August 26 before swinging through Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart and Adelaide and wrapping up with a two-night stand at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena on September 6 and 7.
'Looking back on what we've done with these songs, it's really a band record,' Kelly said of Seventy. 'Peter Luscombe has been with me for more than 30 years, Bill McDonald and Dan Kelly for 20. Even the newbies Cameron Bruce and Ash Naylor have been with me since 2007.'
Rita Wrote A Letter — the 7NEWS verdict
A bouncing, jaunty arrangement — think the 2014 Merri Soul Sessions project and a vocal line at times not dissimilar to Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel's 1975 hit Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) — seems somewhat at odds with its lyrical content. Let's just say Joe didn't get out by July, and when he eventually did, things didn't get much better.
Though Kelly had already announced the death of Joe earlier this week — and indeed makes it clear in the opening couplet — the method of his demise and the events leading to it will take some fans by surprise. Eagle-eyed listeners will note the clear connection (and we're not talking about the letter) to another hit, To Her Door, Kelly having previously suggested the two songs may in fact be about the same character.
Will it become a beloved classic like its predecessor? Probably not — but considering the original's two-decade journey from cherished secret passed around barbecues and late night/early morning loungerooms to national treasure, you never know. Perhaps that redemptive aspect (late in the song Kelly sings 'I made my bed, I'm lying in it/And I know they're gonna be alright') is the entire point: this is a love letter from a man who did all the dumb things and died to tell the tale.