Track Listing

1. If I could start today again
2. Change your mind
3. Midnight rain
4. I close my eyes and think of you
5. Somewhere in the city
6. Just about to break
7. Love is the law
8. The pretty place
9. I wasted time
10. Would you be my friend?
11. Smoke under the bridge

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118966 in Music
• Released on: 2001-09-17
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Nothing But a Dream is the first of Paul Kelly's many albums which does not contain any of the explicit--or even obscure--references to Australia that characterise his work. It is unlikely that this represents any sort of career move on Kelly's part--he has been doing things his own way too long--but it is nonetheless to be hoped that this album of songs concerned with all the great universal themes (love and the loss of it, life and the dwindling of it) attracts a wider audience to Kelly's astonishing gifts. His peers are the great American populist chroniclers--Springsteen, Dylan, Earle--and his catalogue stands comparison with any of theirs. Kelly's genius is for doing the simple things well. His music is simply arranged, his lyrics are straightforwardly told, and his voice is plaintively honest. What distinguishes him from the world's uncountable legions of dreary, self-obsessed groaners with guitars is his knack for an insidious melody or subtle turn of phrase that ensures the songs last long past their final chord. "If I Could Start Today", "I Wasted Time" and "Close My Eyes" are among the very best things Kelly has written, and those lucky or enlightened enough to know his work well will understand that this is pretty much as good as it gets. --Andrew Mueller

Customer Reviews

Australian singer-songwriter produces his masterpeice
Some fifteen years after Paul Kelly recorded his breakthrough album, Gossip, he's finally equalled, if not bettered it with 2001's ...nothing but a dream. It is very different to Gossip, and indeed to it's predecessor, 1998's acclaimed Words And Music. These were sprawling albums, rendered on a large canvas. ...nothing but a dream, by contrast, is a tight, focused, intimate, personal work. Here we find a wiser but sadder Kelly (this is his Songs of Experience to Gossip's Songs of Innocence, if you like). All the tracks here concern themselves with love and loss, age and death. And yet the album still contains wonderful moments of humour and hope, and still encompasses a range of musical styles while remaining a thematically focused and coherent whole.

The set opens with a triptych of semi-acoustic pieces on the end of relationships. The sweet sorrow of If I Could Start Today Again and the desperate longing of the creeping Change Your Mind are crowned by a vivid evocation of loss in the glorious Midnight Rain. This is surely one of Kelly's greatest ever songs. Lyrically it is full of painful insight and beautiful honesty. It explores the time after the end of a long, long relationship - the way that other person suddenly comes into your mind for no reason at all, and the strange fragments the retreat of intimacy leaves behind (captured in a wonderful final refrain). The semi-spoken delivery deepens the personal feel of this song, and is a style that Kelly has been trying to perfect for years.

The focus in the middle of the album shifts toward an investigation of the idea of love, with the soft sadness of the opening tracks replaced by more up-tempo music and trademark bittersweet humour in the lyrics. But there is a constant awareness of love's transience; never is it allowed it to exist in the suspended animation of fairytale romance that is the usual territory of the pop song. The sweet melody of I Close My Eyes And Think Of You hides loneliness and loss, meanwhile the insistent rock of Somewhere In The City underscores it's theme of frustrated desire. Just About To Break is all pent up love and harsh electronic beats in an unexpected sonic departure that works surprisingly well, while Love Is The Law speaks of love's beauty while hinting at it's failure.

The final part of the album deals with age and mortality. There is still room for comedy amid the fiddle-fuelled country of I Wasted Time (despite the subject matter), but by the final track the music is stripped bare amid a bleak story of homelessness. This song, reminiscent of Dylan, is sung quite beautifully (possibly Kelly's best ever vocal performance). Sad and moving, it nevertheless manages to end the album on a note of hope. The happiness and companionship sought after by the romantics of earlier songs is here found in simple things - "A friendly fire, some company under the bridge".

This is an album full of lyrical and musical depth, with each listen revealing more of the artistry that has created it. It has a progression and completeness that is rare, and rewards the listener. It is art that will improve with age, like a good (aussie) wine.

Subdued, atmospheric and personal
Paul Kelly's long awaited follow up to his career best WORDS AND MUSIC. Maybe comparable to Neil Young's Silver and Gold. The title gives a hint..nothing but a dream. Mostly acoustic based with some electronics. and when Paul sings "I really love her smile but i sure worry about her soul" in Somewhere in the City it really hits home. I think the Ratbagy and Uncle BIll releases have widened Paul's scope with a lot of different influences now showing in his work.