Yet he is, as we’re surprised to find when we chat with him ahead of his forthcoming 19th album Spring And Fall and London show, one who doesn’t even think of himself as a singer-songwriter at all. Well, not until now that is.
“I’ve played with my nephew Dan a lot over the last seven or eight years and we’ve developed a sound I felt would be good as a starting point for a record,” the 58-year-old explains of his latest long player’s birth.
“I had never made what I would call a singer-songwriter record before even though that’s what I’m known for – I usually put a band together and play and write with them.”
Spring And Fall comes out of what has been, even for a man with such a formidably prolific back catalogue to his name, a particularly productive few years that birthed a retrospective record, tours and accompanying book.
The eight-disc The A-Z Recordings is a live document of Kelly’s career to date that’s seen him earn a global fanbase with his bold personal tales and political observations, and folk-infused acoustic rock. It’s comprised of 100 songs from his career, drawn from shows between 2004 and 2010 when he took this retro-format out on the road, including four-night stops at the Sydney Opera House in 2006 and London’s Bush Hall in 2011.
An accompanying book emerged, as well; Kelly had initially started to write a few words to accompany each song, only for this endeavour to mutate into “mongrel memoir” How To Make Gravy. And it has been this all-consuming and introspective period Spring And Fall has reacted against.
“All writers fall into habits and I definitely do,” Kelly tells us, with his inimitable frankness and honesty. “I am pretty limited as a musician and you tend to find most artists write about the same things – sex, death, memory, love. You have to try and do things differently.”
The secret to finding things to write about, and to his longevity, Kelly tells us, is curiosity – “Not doing the same things all the time and just having an interesting life.” It’s fair to say that Kelly has certainly had that, and Spring And Fall is definitely him avoiding repeating himself.
As well as starting out on the project without his usual accompanying band of musicians, the record differs from previous Kelly albums in that it is a single cohesive piece of work that tells the story of a relationship.
“It’s a love story from the beginning of a relationship to the end,” he says, adding that it is influenced by his own life (Kelly’s been married twice) but is not autobiographical.
“The point of view shifts, sometimes it is more of a third-person voice, sometimes a first-person perspective, sometimes it’s the man, others the woman,” he tells us.
Kelly’s musical output has varied, taking influences from acoustic folk and rock, bluegrass and even dub reggae since he first emerged with Paul Kelly and The Dots in the mid-Seventies. So naturally Fall has its own sound, too.
“I wanted to keep the instrumentation sparse and make each song lead into the next,” he explains of what is shaping up to be a new chapter in his ever-evolving career.
“What happened was we invited a producer on board, J Walker, and he ended up playing a lot of double bass and harps on the record, so we did kind of become a three-piece band. We used a combination of differently tuned acoustic guitars and that was our bedrock sound for the record.”
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Where Kelly’s reaction to the 150-strong touring roster of songs for the A-Z shows was to take a stripped back sound for the record, Fall also represents a reaction to the way music is consumed these days.
“If you are going to make an album you have to make it more than just a collection of songs,” Kelly explains of what went on to become a defence in many ways of ‘the album’ as a musical statement and work.
“People can listen to music in many formats, pick up a song here or there in a more grazing style,” he says. “If an album is a collection of songs you might as well just put them out one by one. Spring And Fall will be more rewarding if you listen to it all in order.”
Kelly drew on the structure he had taken on when penning Gravy, incorporating many of the artistic influences and rigours from that experience into Fall’s love story.
“In the book I had an in-built structure in the alphabet,” he recalls of the two-year-long process the book became. “Different chapters had different styles, though, I could write an essay and then another would be more personal, then another was a family memoir, or a tour diary – I could mix it up but I had a structure in place and that slid through [into the album].”
Hearing Kelly defend albums, we half expect him to launch into some criticism of today’s iTunes-dictated music universe. To be a nostalgist who preferred things as they were, who’s mourning vinyl while admonishing the musically uneducated. He is, though, much to our surprise, nothing of the sort.
“I like the choice – as an artist and as someone who consumes music,” he says of the greater musical freedom tech advances have brought.
“I don’t want to go back to the days when you had to buy the album to hear a song that wasn’t the single. It’s good – the more choice there is, the better. But paradoxically that means there is more and more reason to make an album now.”
To make the point almost, his forthcoming show at London’s prestigious Cadogan Hall will differ to the usual shows served up when bands and artists tour, where they’re most likely to throw in a few new ones off the latest LP and then the tried and tested crowd favourites. “We have special plans for the show,” he reveals.
“We’re going to play Spring And Fall as a piece, from the first song to the last, and then the second half of the show will be dipping into the catalogue of old songs.”
It’s going to be a true one-off opportunity to see Kelly, dabbling in the hits, and opening the door on this new chapter. Don’t miss!
Spring And Fall is out April 15 through Dramatico.
Kelly plays Cadogan Hall. April 12. £25 SW1X 9DQ
Tube | Sloane Square
cadoganhall.com
Photos: Daniel Boud; Tony Mott; Getty
