Lucid Intervals by George Kelly

Lucid Intervals, strictly speaking, is not a blues album, but it's a great album: a record of bluesy, heartland rock with serious songwriting aspiration. Intervals is Kelly's first album, and it serves notice that he's after big game. The opening track, "Get What U Pay For"... wearily recounts the price you pay to get to the top, and Kelly's slide guitar adds a dimension of resignation to the song's unfolding. The following tracks prove Kelly adept at love-lost balladry ("Bad memories of days gone by/Waste the present, God knows why"), but the album truly finds its groove midway through. "Bluesman" is the only 12-bar number on the album, and it's an effortless, gritty blues. The following cut, "Otis Spann," sounds like the long-lost cousin of "Sultans of Swing," as Kelly bemoans that the Muddy Waters pianist is "buried in an unmarked grave". The final three album tracks, "Love Interest", "Desert Island" and "Pyrrhic Victory" demonstrate just how powerful a base blues and jazz can be to writing pop songs; the jazzy arrangements here elevate the songs far above typical AOR fare, and the lyrics hold their own. Try to imagine what Dire Straits would sound like if Mark Knopfler played slide guitar, and you're on the right track.

Over the course of Lucid Intervals, we've heard, in addition to your basic band lineup, horns, congas, accordion, flute, Uillean pipes, and bodhran-and none of it sounds forced or scattershot. Vocally, Kelly possesses a worn croon that suits his music well. He's equally comfortable singing slower and faster songs. The coarse edge to his voice imparts credibility to his song subjects, but the gentle vocal baseline that he sets ensures that his welcome doesn't wear out by album's end. On the slide guitar, Kelly combines dexterity and buttery tone with a knack for knowing when and when not to play. Finally, in his songwriting he tackles themes of loss, frustration, aging, and other heavy subjects with aplomb. Lucid Intervals is a serious album from a serious talent, and satisfying from beginning to end."

- Jim Angehr, August 2004

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