Robin Kelly – Orewa Heartbeat

Robin Kelly – Orewa Heartbeat 

URL: http://www.robinkelly.co.nz/Musician.html

Robin Kelly is ambitious if nothing else. Not content with merely just being a musician, singer, and songwriter, Kelly is also a motivational speaker, workshop presenter, author, and doctor. His wide breadth of knowledge in the area of holistic and alternative medicine based around principles of Eastern philosophy has enabled him to establish a thriving practice in his native New Zealand and pursue a variety of related projects. He’s recently finished writing his first stage show and has been recently touring a one man show offering music built around the deep healing process integral to his methods as a physician. The thoughtfulness and enormous musicality that goes into Robin Kelly’s recordings are the clearest indications we have that this is a true artist who is steadily building one of the more impressive discographies in the modern music scene, indie or otherwise, today. Orewa Heartbeat is appropriately titled as the solid pulse of humanity distinguishes each of its thirteen songs. 

You can hear that beating heart in Kelly’s music coming through from the first song onward. “Waiting for Me Too” has an underlying wise intelligence running alongside an open-armed warmth that invites listeners into its imaginative world from the first. Much of this aforementioned warmth comes from the sound of Kelly’s voice. He’s not a trained singer in the classical sense, but limited imaginations place undue primacy on technical skill over the talent for dramatizing a lyric and making a listener believe. Kelly makes you believe every word of the album’s second song, as well, an unabashed love song entitled “I Wanna Love You”. The rustic, Americana airs of the track are credible and Kelly does an impressive job avoiding any sort of clichés typically associated with the form. He revisits some of the first song’s classical trappings in Orewa Heartbeat’s third track “Truthseeker (Song for Pete)” and also succeeds in expanding the lyrical range of the album without sacrificing anything from vocal or musical presentation. The balladic strands running through “I Apologize” will definitely pluck an assortment of heart strings, but he mixes it with some of the album’s classical influences without overdoing the sound and incorporates other instruments as well. It ends up sounds like a confessional pop gem with a stylish veneer.

“Would It Be Enough For You?” is another powerful love song with a stronger folky air than we hear with many Orewa Heartbeat cuts and the nakedly emotional vocal rendering Kelly delivers elevates the simple lyrics to a level of performed poetry. We get additional glimpses into Kelly’s autobiography with his song “The Tennessee Moon (Beams Down and Smiles)” with its depiction of a visit to Nashville and its winking penchant for namechecking the genre’s iconic past. The beautifully unadorned poetry of “Where Are You Now?” exists on both a musical and lyrical level without any of the grunting and straining we hear from other artists. The way he speaks to a near universal desire to see some loving evidence of God in the midst of the world’s turmoil will, undoubtedly, touch many and his voice really gets under the skin of its subject matter. Orewa Heartbeat ends on a bit of a downcast, sad note with the song “Someone Else’s Dream”, but it does nothing to negate the emotional depth and frequent joy heard in many of the earlier songs. There’s something for everyone on Robin Kelly’s Orewa Heartbeat. 

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.fr/Orewa-Heartbeat-Robin-Kelly/dp/B07916J7QR

Mindy McCall