KELLY, PAUL - Nature (Sealed) (CD)

Forty years into his career, legendary Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly is still finding new ways to write songs. On his 24th studio album, he continues his recent penchant for pairing music with poems, some his own (“A Bastard Like Me”, a tribute to Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins), others by the likes of Dylan Thomas (“And Death Shall Have No Dominion”), Walt Whitman (“With Animals”) and Philip Larkin (“The Trees”). Linking them all thematically is the natural world and the human place within it, Kelly’s nasally vocal twang guiding beautifully constructed folk songs that oscillate between playful (“God’s Grandeur”), haunting (“Bound to Follow”), cinematic (“Morning Storm”) and plaintive (“Seagulls of Seattle”).