Eugene Kelly - Man Alive
If the name Eugene Kelly isn’t immediately familiar to you, then the work and legacy of this man most certainly should be. His band the Vaseline’s were only around for a couple of years, splitting in 1989 after releasing one LP, but in the short span did become a massive favorite of Kurt Cobain, rarely does a Nirvana box set or previously unreleased material compilation album appear without one of Kelly’s tracks on it somewhere. His next band was Eugenius who were on Creation, although for a short time was called Captain America. That name had to be changed due to copyright reasons with Marvel Comics, which made the PR potential of Nirvana wearing the bands t-shirts on the cover of NME seem rather redundant. Recently he has toured with Teenage Fan Club and brings out this new record ‘Man Alive’ towards the end of September.
One of the many things on his musical CV is that he teamed up with Evan Dando to write the Lemonheads hit ‘If I Could Talk I’d Tell You’, and there is a definite lean in that direction on this album. ‘I’m Done With Drugs’ is a rocking opener that could have easily found it’s way on to one of Dando’s records and is a good clue as to what sort of thing you might find throughout.
The pace and tempo is dropped a notch or two with ‘I’ll Be Yours’ and it continues in that vain through tracks three and four. ‘Older Faster’ and ‘Seven Out’ are both soft dreamy and mellow and great for listening to on a summers afternoon, in fact, cheesey as it may sound, this whole album is best suited to that kind of weather.
The tempo rises once again with the fifth track, ‘You're Having My Sex’, and this is the way the album progresses throughout its sixteen tracks. A mixture of melancholy ballads and feel good Americana with a leaning in the direction of the quality end of Country influenced rock music. It is difficult to point you in the direction of other highlights as it is a consistently strong album throughout, but ‘Sinking Ship’, ‘The Heeling Power of Fire Walking’ and ‘She Wears My Ring’, are tracks that need you to hear them.