Review: Jeff Kelly and the Graveyard Shift generates piercing glows on self-titled debut album

Our humanity is broken. Its bloody and blistered shards pepper the ground on which we are forced to trudge every single day. You can turn on the evening news or scroll your social timelines and witness the consequences of our harmful habits and the actions of those who harbor nothing but spiteful venom in their veins. When it’s all said and done, as the sun weeps over the horizon’s dulled razor edge, we are all damaged and seeking redemption in our own tired loops. Blues-rocker Jeff Kelly, of Jeff Kelly and the Graveyard Shift, heaves exasperated breaths in and out onto yellowed notebook paper. The band’s debut long-player unpacks the most harrowing confessions of his heart, skin-shocked electricity flowing outward from his pen and finally flying free in gravelly, throat-clogging wails. He handles tattered images of love and loss with cool, brazen recklessness, and you never once get a chance to catch your breath.

Kelly masterfully brandishes his voice in bright extremes. Songs like “Blizzard,” a teary examination of fleeting youth, featuring Kyra Waltz on harmony, and “Butcher,” a remarkably brittle, extraordinary ballad about the brutality of life itself, hardening hearts and innocence into candle wax, with Amy Nash warbling in the background, mark Kelly as one of the most astute and gifted storytellers of today’s Americana scene. His lyrical structures are classic, yet remain steeped in potent truths of the modern world. “I’ve seen the couple dance in the night, all alone / I’ve seen the couple dance when one of them’s not home / Sometimes two lovers grow distant and tired of each other / But in growing apart, they have more beauty and depth if they return,” he sings on the latter, lugging his exact emotional weight into the song with force.

Therein lies the magic of Jeff Kelly and the Graveyard Shift, 11 songs of intimate, breakable songcraft. In ripping his heart from his chest, he peers into the windows of ours, the listener, with a sharp, unwavering and altogether haunting gaze. With “Dim in Your Arms,” Kelly thrashes about in uncertainty, coming to terms with a new town and its trouble-prone ways. “No matter the proof / This whiskey just won’t do / I am drunk with the thoughts on my mind, and this town’s gonna eat me alive,” he sings, allowing himself to feel the pain and regret coursing in his blood. Such permissions are riddled throughout the record, and in his screams, his pleas and even his prayers, he discovers himself and his humanity.

Kelly meanders freely through space and time, as he does so on “Ghost,” an excavation of a long-forgotten memory from his childhood. “What is it you’re doing here? And when will you be done? / Your hands have pushed me this far to the darkness of the sun,” he paints, bravely summoning people, places and things that have left his brain muddled and bruised. “Where has your mother been? / You saw her in the washroom, resting on a knife / Bleeding in the night.” Later, with “Farmer’s Sun,” he seems to cave under the pressure, emotionally unleashing a story of crippling loss, devastation and homelessness (both literal and psychological). “A loved one is lost, not forgotten, till the other one dies,” he observes.

Originally out of Massachusetts, the singer, songwriter and musician blew as a tumble weed in the wind. Music was his siren, which eventually led him to Indianapolis, and it was there, seemingly tucked away from the familiar he once knew, that the guitar drew him unto itself. Over the past decade or so, he’s fixated his attention on the kind of visceral songwriting that embodies the true scope of human existence. “I cut myself open, bleed out each drop,” he sings on “Alive,” one of the album’s most intense, penetrating lyrics. He later draws in similarly harsh, but honest, strokes, “Drag me through fire coals under my feet / Let’s walk hand and hand till we’re both buried deep.”

But Kelly isn’t paralyzed by his tragedies. He’s simply reinvigorated by them. “I’m doing just fine / My heart’s still alive,” he promises on the opener, “Built That Way,” which primes the listener to the belief that misfortunes are back-bone-enforcing necessities. “Rich Man for a Day” lassos a get-rich scheme to pull himself out of an endless slump ⏤ “I went down to the twenty four hour store / To try my hand at the lottery / That’s when my crooked mind got the best of me / And I planned the perfect get rich robbery,” he sings to reassess perceptions of self and reality. Even with closer, the volatile “River Song,” which illustrates the gutting power of his voice, he possesses an enrapturing, soul-cleansing charm. “I have a way of losing myself in my thoughts,” he howls into the night.

Jeff Kelly and the Graveyard Shift ⏤ which pulses from the talents of such players as Charlie Ballantine (guitar), Philip Sloan (bass), Kevin Hood (drums), Mina Kehone (vocals, keys, accordion) and Kelsey Arntzen (violin, cello) ⏤ is the kind of low-flying record that packs far more punches than most in the mainstream or Texas scene. Kelly soars through the air, broadcasting each harrowing injury he’s incurred so far in this life, and his songwriting is never under-baked or overcooked. It marries blues, alternative, rock and Americana in a mix that’s imposing and instinctual.

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