To some, Nick Kelly will always be remembered as the frontman of Irish rock band The Fat Lady Sings, forever beloved for their immortal anthem Arclight. To others, he's an acclaimed filmmaker and writer/director of acclaimed coming-of-age tale The Drummer And The Keeper.
Music and film collide in his first documentary project The Song Cycle, a road movie, musical, and an engaging, funny and moving meditation on art, mortality and friendship, coming to Irish cinemas this May.
We asked Nick for his choice cultural picks...
FILM
A bitter irony of travelling to film festivals is you rarely get to watch a film. However hard I'm working plugging my own I always strive to see at least one by somebody else. In Berlin, I was lucky enough to snag a hen’s tooth ticket for Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Irish-produced and written (by Alan Maher and Mark O’Halloran, respectively) which is beautiful and subtle, with a central scene between Anders Danielsen Lie and Bill Pullman that would break the hardest heart. In Luxembourg, I caught the funny and moving I Swear, starring Robert Awamayo as a man living with Tourette’s. In Rome I was fascinated by Alan Gilsenan’s illuminating documentary on James Connolly, We Only Want The Earth.
MUSIC
We’re in a particularly rich vein of form in Ireland. I am obsessed with Lankum’s drone-trad - False Lankum is stunning. My personal favourite song of last year was We Didn’t Know We Were Ready from A Dawning, a collaboration between Ólafur Arnalds and the cruelly departed Talos. My genius fellow Dogs-body Seán Millar has just released I Am Vermin, an extraordinarily ambitious 5-disc album which nobody interested in music or flawed humanity should deny themselves.
BOOK
I recently very much enjoyed Richard E Grant’s scurrilous diva diaries With Nails. I’m deep into a fascinating biography of Hannibal (the Carthaginian General, not the chianti and fava beans chef) by Eve McDonald. I have been re-reading The Racket, Conor Niland’s vivid and brutally honest account of his life on the global tennis tour, with huge pleasure and the occasional sympathetic wince of pain.
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PLAY
I was grateful to be invited to the premiere of Dublin Gothic in the Abbey late last year, and I’ve seen Hamilton twice, but I’m really more of an off-Broadway / THISISPOPBABY guy. Every one of Pat Kinevane’s one-man plays has been a stunning achievement.
TV
For some reason my usual squeamishness has not prevented me being gripped by The Pitt, a visceral (in every sense) roller-coaster set in an overrun hospital emergency department. Having never really got into Game Of Thrones, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms – towering first timer Peter Claffey is such an engaging and relatable protagonist, he’s going to be huge (well, he is already). I cannot wait to see the new season of The Dry, Pom Boyd is so bold!
GIG
I was privileged recently to witness The Church of What’s Happening Next in the very cool Fumbally Stables with their special guest Richard Evans - pastoral electronica some distance in time and decibels removed from The Virgin Prunes, but no less compelling. I was devastated to miss David Byrne on his recent visit but am looking forward to remedying that pain this summer when he returns to St Anne’s Park. I’m also looking forward to seeing Geese at End Of The Road in September.
ART
Last month I got to whistlestop through the spectacular glass works in the Chihuly Museum in Seattle. My inner child was thrilled by Euphoria: Art Is In The Air, an immersive exhibition of balloon art on a vast scale housed in the Grand Palais in Paris. By far the most interesting exhibit in the excellent Andy Warhol museum in his hometown of Pittsburgh is the framed payslip for his annual earnings as a graphic artist on Madison Avenue in 1959 - a whopping $53,000 (over half a million today)!
RADIO
I’m a big and promiscuous talk radio listener, but more discerning when it comes to music shows. John Creedon never plays what you expect but never fails to please. Tom Dunne is as entertaining in between the records as he is in his selection. I’ve recently found myself drifting more and more to RTÉ lyric FM – I don’t really see any difference between classical and contemporary music, and I’m delighted to realise that they don’t either.
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TECH
Apart from general doom-scrolling (which I’m prone to), the three bits of tech I most use are all associated with my pretty slow running practice: Strava, which gives me the stark truth about my performance; my bone-conducting Shokz headphones which channel beautiful noise directly to my eardrums to take my mind off my suffering; and the official Parkrun App, which allows me to log my own achievements with, and occasionally volunteer my services to, this brilliant and inclusive worldwide community.
THE NEXT BIG THING
I’m kind of looking forward to the next small thing!
The Song Cycle rolls into Irish cinemas from May 1st
