THE MIRROR
If you are pining for mournful swirling chords, lonesome choirboy vocals and songs filled with heart-rending love hangovers, this irish outfit could be just what is required. The rich swell of conviction is hard to resist and is backed by a knack for sharp lyrical detail (Silence Seems To Say). They undoubtably could benefit from being a little less serious but they still, ahem, deliver.
Gavin Martin
Mojo Magazine
Dublin's The Last Post, aka one Alan Kelly, collects his first two singles on First Love:the via dolorosa recordings, a precursor to thepiano-led indie-spirituals of his Love Lost debut released earlier this year. While not yet out of the shadow of Brian Wilson, Jason Pierce and Plush, this youngster is definitely one to watch.
Andrew Carden.
THE TICKET
From out of the blue and straight to your heart comes a wee Dublin chap with a head full of startingly romantic pop music. Love Lost resonates with a prodigious knack for delicious melody, but Alan Kelly also has the gliding arrangements, the cosmic harmonies and an ensemble of virtuous instrumentation. His voice stands alone as the key device with which to ravage your senses,pronouncing bold sentiments of devotion and sailing off on ethereal lullabies. Swelling with high-fidelity poise and flush with lilting country, Love Lost is truly the sound of a fully conceived vision.
Leagues
For some time now, Dubliner Alan Kelly has been tucked away, mapping out paths to redemption and sharing them on singles as The Last Post. After what seems like a lifetime of Saturday nights comes the debut album. Part country, part Cocteaus, all charm, it's the perfect lift off to love and the finest collection in quite a few heartaches. In 28 minutes Kelly and friends feel their way through lessons and affairs, but never lose sound of the pop allure or the melodies in the meloncholy. It Shouldn't Still Hurt (But It Does) is a wallflower anthem, with slide and Spanish guitars and mandolins; You've Got A Hold On Me a cute cavalry on a march of hope; and A Light To Live By the sweet, short affirmation that things will work out. "What is there to say, when there's nothing more to say?" he sings on opener Until The Heart Gives Way. He's right - after hearing this, words fail.
Harry Guerin
www.ohyeah.net
Blame it all on Brian Wilson. Back in 1963, the Beach Boys wonderboy wrote a weird, unsociable song called In My Room. It was the prototype anthem for saddo strummers, the beginnings of a fine tradition. Loads of people have paddled in those blue waters since, including Alex Chilton, Gram Parsons, Elliott Smith, Plush and Spiritualized. Now here's an Irish variation on the theme, around 30 minutes of sustained severity.
The Last Post play it slow, forlorn and seem intent on amplifying every painful, fluttering second of a love affair that's difficult at best. Alan Kelly gets an almost narcotic hit from the pain of it all, as the music swells up behind him, in a manner that music journalists will forever term as "shimmering". On You're All I've Got Left In This World, he burbles the line, "everything that I have is gone" with a kind of Zen rapture.
So this is no bad record then. Great portentious organ chords, guitar arpeggios played at a deathly rate and a wilfully spacey mix that lets the intensity bleed all over the place. To be honest, it would be nice to find some relief in the centre of it all. I Believe is the ultimate gospel of a love that may not be requited. Even the lighter potential of When I Think I Just Can't Start Over fails to reach the anticipated chuckle temperature. But it's a useful stroke of intent from an act that may blossom further. Alan Kelly is an artist of much savvy, with a soul that's admirably large. I hope the girl deserves it.
Stuart Bailie
Six years on from the one and only album The Language Of Everyday Life of his last band In Motion, this is the return to the fray of Dubliner Alan Kelly. But while In Motion was certainly a cohesive unit, The Last Post is a much looser amalgam of musicians who interpret and contribute to Kelly’s wonderful songs. Although they teased us with a couple of seven inch singles before this is very much Kelly’s big (under) statement. There’s a host of key personnel here, from drummer Alan Murphy to producer Mark Caralon to the intriguingly titled vocalist Emmylou Harrison. Most tellingly though is the contribution from Andrew Lyster And The Asteroids (some wonderful ba-ba’s), who judging by his contribution here and the Asteroids recent released E.P. is somewhat of a kindred spirit of Kelly's.
So there are two things that strike about this record. The first is the quality of the songs. Aching with loss, forlorn love and emotion. Better still is that Kelly never once seems to try to do anything express his emotions in a clear and concise manner. The lyrics, whilst never clumsy, are straightforward expressions of feelings, the titles of which give as much away as the music. Until My Heart Gives Way, It Shouldn’t Still Hurt (But It Does) and You’ve Got A Hold On Me aren’t leading you down any blind alleys. To reproduce any of the lyrics here doesn’t do Kelly justice because the music here is as essential as the words. That’s to say it’s as expressive as the words. If that sounds twee, it shouldn’t because the sum of what’s going on here is far greater than the parts. This is one of those truly transcendental records that only come along once in a blue moon.
Secondly though is the quality of the recording. The clarity of every instrument, every vocal and every drum brush is perfect, the arrangements are ambitious but never once are they over the top. On top of that Love Lost is an incredible album which has the maximum ability to travel. The emotions expressed here are felt by people the world over. Simple, uncluttered, universal. Kelly’s vocals are as distinctive as they were in In Motion and the blueprint has obvious roots in those days. ‘I Believe’ has a soaring trumpet sound (where ever it came from) and the opening track Until The Heart Gives Way is positively bursting with emotion. Although it sounds odd, it’s a long time since I’ve come across an album of such straight forward (some unrequited) love songs expressed with such perfect clarity.
With The Last Post you get what it says on the tin, Lost Love. Uncomplicated wonderfully framed songs of lost love. An absolute winner.
Dave Roberts
www.sceneone.co.uk
Imagine Spiritualized crossed with ex-Spaceman, Sonic Boom's earlier, country-infused solo work. Add a pinch of the Cocteau Twins and a smidgen Verve, now hold that thought...
The Last Post's Alan Kelly has taken his Dublin band away from the fey twittering of a million Sarah records and accusations of Belle & Sebastian clonage into their own gentle territory of broken relationships and hazy summers, name-checking the greatest loved-up, broken-down, drowse merchants in the game along the way.
You're All I've Got Left In This World calls to mind the Bo Diddley-covering Sonic, a feeling underlined by When I Think I Just Can't Start Over's folky twang. The languorous tone is set by the heart breaking opening of Until the Heart Gives Way whilst Silence Seems To Say... stretches off into warm July evenings with its muted brass dozing under the hypnotic refrain "I shouldn't love you/but I still do".
Sadly Love Lost is only sporadically successful. A few tracks, like ...And Then You Came Along is more dirge than delight and I Believe slowly, tragically slips beneath a sea of mush, shackled by their own style. The danger of being this good at creating hypnotically drowsy sounds is that eventually, they send you to sleep.
RGB
www.muse.ie
Sometimes, you need music like this. Lovelorn, lonely, downbeat, raw and gently emotional, the notes The Last Post are interested in you hearing are the ones music like this pings and sets off in your own head. A welterweight of thoughts and feelings, there are songs on this collection from Dubliner Alan Kelly and his floating crew of drummers, guitarists and other musical folk which catch the heart and trip the soul. Comparisons, if you need them to signpost your steps and lighten your load, veer from the lush heartlands of The Czars to the wicked country spells of Gram Parsons and his "Grevious Angel"; but mention of such like really is to deny Kelly a wide open run at things. For this is not the work of some somnalent soul, keen to ape the gestures of others. No, Kelly's spirit is a more innovative and precocious one, able and willing to take those extra steps which lead away from the crowd and towards another game, another set of rules. From the gorgeously open-spaced Until The Heart Gives Way to the simply spun A Light To Live By, there is little here which will not cause you to stop and pause a while. Kelly may share geographical space with many but he's on a musical shelf all of his own making. Here's hoping he has more heartworn ballast to offer.
Jim Carroll
DSIDE MAGAZINE
From a bedroom in Crumlin, Dublin, emanates the most fantastic high fidelity romantic pop vision in years. Silence Seems To Say... swells with huge lump-in-the-throat majesty, the sort of far-reaching arrangements that Brian Wilson scaled back in the day. You catch your breath on the short instrumental interludes, only to be swept away by another tsuami of righteous romance and grevious country harmonics. Its's unrelenting: It Shouldn't Still Hurt( But It Does) is a downbeat reflection imbued with mandolin, slide guitar and wavering organ and purpose built for staring into an empty glass. When I Think I Just Can't Start Over is a loping country-blessed lullaby. Resonating with the outstanding voice of one Alan Kelly and aided by the swwet coo of Emmylou Harrison and musicians from an array of Irish acts such as Joan Of Arse and The Asteroids, Love Lost marks the pinnacle of sophisticated pop in 2002.
THE SUNDAY PEOPLE
Sounds like the Eagles Don Henley locked in the church of the latter day saints with a transister radio that can only pick up Nashville AM. Only better.
Alan Kelly is from Dublin and he'll run a mile if you try to coerce him into playing live. Those who set ears on Love Lost will kill to make sure he keeps making music until he can no longer physically manage it....an ode to broken hearts, delivered with Palace Brother ethics, Gram Parsons touches and the thoughtfulness of 1000 new country wannabes.
Colin Murray
THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH
With songs of bittersweet romance and fragile dreams, Alan Kelly's hauntingly beautiful lilting tones are simply breathtaking. Tracks like Until The Heart Gives Way and the delicate I Believe are epic soundscapes, with fragile harmonies washing gently over. After hearing The Last Post you'll be closer to heaven.
The Last Post, Dublin's newest deputies of the alt-country township, have a strange way of making an entire song sound like a chorus: rich, almost unbearably poignant and utterly relentless, and full to capacity with high emotion from the very first bar. Songs like, particularly, uber-weepie Until The Heart Gives Way, are the sound of the moment when you realise you've lost your beloved forever, stretched out - via chorused vocals and a highly overemotional organ - to four heart-wringing minutes.
But, just like at the end of a relationship, there is little sense of progression as one moves through Love Lost, merely the constant revisiting and re-examination of emotional locations already known too well. Passion and heartbreak are mulled inescapably over and over; song shapes and chord progressions recur again and again in an endless cycle of have-a-good-cry songwriting.
This slow, relentless, smiling-through-the-tears melancholy will please a certain kind of urban cowboy but others might wish for a slightly less predictable, soft-focus, featureless terrain; for something acutely observed, personal, revealing; for some flavour other than bittersweet. Still: sometimes a packet of Sniffs and a bit of a sob is your only man
Kim Porcelli