Interviews

The No Disco interview with Leagues O'Toole is available as a 6 minute MP3 here

There are rare moments in the world of music where you put on a record and feel as if it alone could break your heart and the latest and most astonishing Irish album in a long time is from Dubliner Alan Kelly aka The Last Post. For beneath the sleeve of the album Love Lost, Alan Kelly has created melodies to make the heart ache. Mr Kelly is a mysterious creature who has so far shunned photographs but as the music press and dj's in Ireland and the UK take hold of tracks like Silence Seems To Say.Alan could well be pushed into the limelight whether he likes it or not.

I'm totally pleased with the reaction to the album - it's beyond anything i ever expected, he said, speaking from his Dublin hideaway. 

When you read something about yourself or hear your record being played by people you really respect, that blows your mind. For me especially with John Peel playing the record. That's a dream come true really. Alan has been into music for as long as he can recall. I've always worked part-time and worked making music because i've wanted to. I've pretty much always been broke too but it's been worth it to me to concentrate on what i want to do.

Alan has still to decide whether he will do live shows but he did stick his toe in the water by appearing on No Disco. 

So why all the mystery? 

I think originally i didn't have a lot of confidence in anything i was doing so in some ways it was damage limitation, if ididn't expect people to be interested in it then it would be easier for me to keep going. I really didn't expect to be asked for a photo. This is a totally new kind of thing.  But i'm at the stage now where i'll have to react in some way and decide whether to go ahead and do things or whether i'd prefer to stay in my house doing music.

There's really no other way to Love Lost than a work of supreme beauty. So expect to hear a lot more about Mr Kelly - whether he likes it or not.

Maeve Quigley - Sunday Mirror April 2001

Alan Kelly explains why unrequited love is better - for songwriters at least.

Alan Kelly, the man behind The Last Post, has just released his debut album Love Lost. Soft-spoken and endearingly shy,he is responsible for one of the most beautiful records i've ever heard - elequent, powerful,fragile, heart-breaking. Brian Wilson, Gram Parsons and The Cocteau Twins all come to mind.

And so, the first question is - where have you been all my life?

I was in a band called In Motion for about four or five years, from the age of about fifteen until twenty-something. We put out a single and album on Dead Elvis. That ended about six years ago. Since then he's been busy writing what he descibes as "unrequited love songs. As Last Post, i did two singles on my own label(Via Dolorosa) about a year and a half ago,'Weight Of The World' and 'A Light To Live By'. I put them in a few shops, made a video, then had no money at all left afterwards 'cos it cost a lot to do, but i kept writing songs.

Love Lost is the result - a dream of intricately-woven melodies, rich vocal harmonies, and songs which say the simplist but most significant things like 'I know i shouldn't love you, but i still do'(Silence Seems To Say).

It took about nine months to write and was recorded quite quickly, in about eight or nine days altogether.

Although the Last Post is not a band as such, Alan got a rake of friends in to play and sing on the record, including members of Capratone, Joan Of Arse,the Dudley Corporation and Andrew Lyster from the Asteroids. Alan has reciprocated the compliment by singing on The Asteroids new EP Moonlight Music For Beginners.

We don't rehearse as a band. I have my own studio set up where i can do full sale arrangements of the songs. When people first hear the demo's its usually quite obvious how they are meant to be done. They come in and play, then leave.

Alan will find it amusing to see how people react to Love Lost.

The album has some secret reference points which only i know about. I'm interested to see whether people get it right or not. "When i was younger i got into Felt,Television, Cocteau Twins and stuff like that. I rarely listen to new music. In the las few years i've really only listened to older albums and spend most of my time in second hand record shops. Actually after two or three years of never going to gigs i went to two in the last week - Emmylou Harris and Low who were pure class.

Speaking of which, a certain Emmylou Harrison lends her grevious angel voice to a number of tracks, including the opener 'Until The Heart Gives Way'. Alan explains that its a pseudonym for a singer from another band who wishes to remain unidentified, although it's not a very tough one to guess. 

As for his part in the whole D.I.Y. scene in Dublin, he says I was inspired by people from Joan Of Arse and the Redneck Manifesto, who put out their own records. It's quite easy to do, but it does take a bit of money. I did it through a company in the Czech Republic, which is one of the cheapest places. VAR and transport costs aside, it's okay if you do it in small enough quantities. Of course, you'll never, ever make any money out of it. Ever!

Although there are no singles from Love Lost, there is a video for 'I Believe.' 

It's some old sixties super-8 footage an American friend gave to me of his parents prom night. There will also be a small-scale release of an EP with the two previous Last Post singles, probably in February. I'm hoping to get another album out in a year or so.

The possibility of a live outing is remote, he confesses, I'm concentrating on writing new stuff now and i don't want to interrupt myself. If i was going to get a band together i'd have to write a new set of songs especially for that. These songs are really too ornate to do live, or even strip back and play acoustically.

Ornate is a good word to describe the loving care that has gone into the arrangements. 

Harmony is of total importance, Alan says unequivocally, and goes on to descibe how he works carefully on small blocks of harmonies in isolation, before moving on to work on the rest. Every songwriter has their different methods. I tend to use all the methods - sometimes all in one song.

Are you a hopeless romantic, i inquire? 

I wouldn't say that, he counters, unconvincingly. But you do write a lot of love songs? 

Love songs, yeah, but very 'hurt' kind of love songs. Unrequited love.

The worst (and best) kind.

Hot Press

The Last Post are already seasoned purveyers of true pop music - that instantly stunning blend of noise and melody fused from lovingly homecrafted production standards and steeped in raw emotion. This loose, slightly elusive collective is headed by Alan Kelly, formerly of Dublin indie popsters In Motion and an unsung thoroughbred songwriting genius. Kelly's kaleidoscope of swirling sounds - part blazing sunlight, part lovelorn shadow and part mysterious moonshine - forms his strongest and most vibrant release yet - the second Last Post album entitled Dry Land.

It took a long time to put together and i think its all been worth it in the end, Alan half speaks and half whispers down a phone line. 

It was quite a bit of a slog recording the album. I made quite a few records before but it was the first time i've made a full album all in one go. Before it was lots of bits that i compiled.

Dry Land was painstakingly assembled, arranged and produced by familiar local sonic stalwart Marc Carolan and Alan.

The arrangements are a bit more ambitious this time. Working with a label meant we could spend a few extra days on it and bringing in strings and doing it properly. I paid for everything on the first album myself so there were a few corners cut at the time. With this, i could see every idea through to conclusion. I upgraded my home studio and added bits and bobs. Initially i did all my stuff on a four track. This was a dugital eight track and i was able to to work at home with sequencers. I have a certain amount of discipline as well when it comes to working with an eight track and taking things out to make things a bit more concise. It is bigger but ut's not over the top.

To date, Last Post live engagements have been few and far between. Kelly's low key live debut was a support slot to Scots Irish collective The Reindeer Section. Recently, Kelly has been playing more frequently live with a small and perfectly formed band.

I started to play live with brother and sister Aoife and Fin O'Leary, Alan reveals. Myself and Marc do guitar parts. We had a guy called Justin Carroll who has played around on different things. He has toured with Van Morrison and stuff and he played proper grand piano and Hammond organ and i think that it gave it a better blend and lent it a flow and a better feel. Dee from The Jimmy Cake and David Kitt's band played a bit of clarinet and then you had Kittser as well. I had that song written and it was one of the songs on the album which i had written which was like a dialogue that answers back to lines i'd sing. I had intended somebody else to sing that anyway. From hearing interviews with David Kitt and talking to him i thought he had a nice speaking voice that was really reassuring so that is what that song is about anyway. How important somebody else is to me and talking back to me. I just thought his voice would suit. It took a lot for me to ask David Kitt. That's a thing Gary Lightbody's got - he has the neck to ask whoever he wants.

Mind you, whoever Alan wants is just as likely to be thrilled and flattered to work with him. Kelly sees The Last Post as an unfixed entity, free to pursue tangents and various temporary line ups unconstrained by the monotony of a 'line up'.

Ideally i think when most people make changes to develop what they do they change producer where i'd like to continue working with Marc and bring in other collaborators in to write stuff. There is so much stuff happening here that i find myself watching gigs and wanting to work with a person. If you read anything about the Chicago scene and Will Oldham and all that kind of stuff i think something that always crops up is that he loves to work with all these different people but there is no way he'd maintain a full time band. People have their jobs or are in two or three other bands anyway. For me that's the way i see people in Dublin. It's a real honour for me to bring these people in and to work with them. It's as much as i can ask to have them play. Most people do have other things so i cannot really foresee a solid band because there is actually too many other people i still want to work with. It eases the pressure on everybody and its enjoyable. I think it's a nice situation and different from that gang mentality where things have to be achieved and you have to get a career or a living out of it.

Eamonn Sweeney Homage Magazine 

Alan Kelly, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and studio boffin talks to Adran Finlay about his blossoming new pop project The Last Post.

The Last Post has had huge critical acclaim but there's some confusion out there as to actually what it is - to be exact, is it a band or not?

No, i don't really see it as a band. Obviously it's not just me playing on the records, because i work with different people all the time, people like David Kitt, Joan Of Arse and the Dudley Corporation. But i write, demo and arrange everything myself before i go into the studio, so effectively it's my baby. I hate to admit it, but i suppose i am something of a control freak. Maybe some day The Last Post will be a cohesive band, but not just now.

Do you see yourself as part of Dublin's D.I.Y. scene?

Well, i was inspired by people around town like Joan Of Arse and Redneck Manifesto, people who put out their own records. It's quite easy to do, but it does require a lot of money. I did it myself for a while, through a company in the Czech Republic, which is one of the cheapest places. But even that cost a fortune in the end, what with VAT and transport costs, so i ended up working with a label.

Your music is very different to the generally accepted idea of D.I.Y, though.

It's very classical really, very conventional in a way. I use a lot of strings and brass and harmonies are very important to me. I've had a lot of comparisons with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, which is obviously very flattering.

You were in a band, In Motion, for a long time before you started working on your own - what was that experience like?

That band started when i was 15 and lasted about five years, during which timw we made just one album. I think wew were far too lazy in many ways and so it ran it's course. It left me feeling that i never really wanted to be in a proper band again. in some ways, i see what i'm doing now as an extention of that band. But being in charge means i can do things like take out all the drums if i think it'll make a song sound better. I couldn't do that in a band because the drummer's ego would never allow it!

Your first album was released without any fanfare but got a lot of favourable critical attention. What effect did that have on you when you came to record the follow up?

I didn't do much promotion with the first album because i was afraid to have expectations. But after getting such a great reaction i've started to enjoy myself a lot more. I had a very firm idea of what kind of album i wanted to make this time. Specifically, i wanted to move away from songs that could be too easily defined as one genre or another. On the first album i felt that a lot of the songs could be pigeonholed as folk, country or whatever. But now i think i'm getting closer to my own personal sound. What i really like is when someone tells me they heard a song of mine on the radio and knew straight away it was me. That tells me i'm doing something right. I thought of the album title Dry Land before i had any of the songs. It evokes the idea of going through bad times but finding some kind of safety on the other side, which was what i wanted to write about. So i thought that i was making a much more positive album. But it seems no matter what i do, it still ends up sounding really sad!

Can you describe how the recording process works?

Basically, people come and go. Sometimes they're surprised by how much freedom i allow. They expect me to tell them exactly what they have to do. But while i'm happy to let people contribute their own ideas, in the end, i decide what to keep and what to put to one side. I also have a producer, Marc Carolan, who plays a very important part in the whole process.

The songs are very heavily orchestrated - do you find it easy to recreate them when you play live?

Whenever i've played live there's been a different permutation on stage, so it differs from gig to gig. You're taking a chance because the songs demand a lot of respect from the audience. The band who convinced me that it could be done where Low. I saw them play in Whelan's and it was just a revelation - i realised that you didn't have to shout at the audience to get people to listen.

Would you ever consider recording an album under your own name?

Well, there's a traditional musician called Alan Kelly so i don't want to be confused with him! But anyway, i like the idea of using a name like The Last Post. It's kind of like an alter ego i can slip into whenever i want.

In Dublin Magazine