Paul Kelly was one of those artists that I arrived at the college radio station determined to find. He had received laudatory reviews in Rolling Stone, one of the few sources for music information that I had in the mid-to-late eighties. Despite the Australian troubadour’s relative obscurity on these shores, the publication reviewed his records, approvingly quoting the lyrics and generally describing his songwriting capabilities with the same sort of unabashed enthusiasm they usually reserved for more sainted figures like Neil Young. His music clearly wasn’t going to get played on the commercial radio stations I could access during my youth, but I thought there was a good chance he had a residence in the daunting, wondrous wall of records at my new home in college.

Sure enough, nestled away in the “C Stacks,” the place the Music Director filed performers that inspired no recognition whatsoever from the general populace, were a couple of Paul Kelly records, including those I had seen reviewed, included the splendid Under the Sun. That was the one that captured me, that I sought out and purchased, that I listened to with the same determined intensity that the most devote have when they read the Bible. I found personal truths within the grooves of that record. As a result, listening to it was freeing.

That was especially the case with the title track. Even though I’ve never left South Freemantle in Falcon panel van, I connected with the yearning tone of the song, and it’s too Kelly’s credit that the very sound of the song invoked the feeling of rolling through the countryside with the summer sun blazing down. The song, like a lot of Paul Kelly songs, has its bittersweet qualities, but the sound of it is buoyant and celebratory.

Paul Kelly & the Messengers, “Under the Sun”

(Disclaimer: Under the Sun is out of print. It’s out of print in the U.S. anyway. It might be available in Kelly’s native Australia. You can also get a greatest hits collection that has some terrific songs, but not, as best as I can tell, this one. So, as usual, I drop a song into the space under the belief that the song can’t easily be acquired through means that put money in the artist’s pocket. If someone with due authority to do so cares to set me straight or simply asks me to remove it, I will comply as quickly as possible.)