"Where are they now?"

Recently I've been amused by the fact that almost all of the artists I liked when I was a pre-teen have made comeback albums. Hanson are back, Backstreet Boys are back. Boyzone will get together again. Take That will get together again, however without Robbie Williams. (I'm on a roll, I was not even a Take That fan.) That leaves only one band. The Kelly Family.

I'm always a little embarassed to admit I was once a fan of theirs, even though their song "I can't help myself" was very popular at my school, back in 1996. Die hard fans of Kelly Family weren't exactly considered to be your normal, supportive fan - The Kelly Family became their religion and it was their belief that the youngest member, Angelo, was in fact an angel, because of his long blonde hair and middle name Gabriel. There are even rumours of fans commiting suicide in the belief that they'd get to "Kelly Heaven".

My interest in the quirky family didn't go beyond the fact that 1)I liked their music and 2) I thought Paddy was "kinda cute". I had 4 of their albums I think until I stopped being a Kelly fan and donated them to a charity jumble sale.

But as all the other artists I was a fan of started to release music again I started to wonder.. Where are they now? Thinking that whatever they were doing, Germany would know about it (as the Kelly Family were huge there in their glory days), I started browsing amazon.de. Lo and behold! this is what I found out:

John Kelly, one of the older brothers, released an album in collaboration with soprano Maite Itoiz, who is also his wife. The album title "Tales from the secret forest" sounds like a fairytale, and the music itself, based on amazon's 30 sec samples, sounds like a mix of fairytale, new age, irish folk and rock opera. To my ears this doesn't sound like a pop album per se, because the fairytale like tracks and simple melodies make it sound so much like a musical or disney movie or something of the sort. But the music, whatever you may call it, is in its way charming and I find to my astonishment that John is one of the few Kelly members who actually had a pleasant voice.

Angelo, the youngest brother whom I already mentioned, has also gone solo and just released his first album, "I'm ready". Though judging from the music samples, I don't think he was. The songs in itself aren't half bad; something that would fit into the "adult contemporary pop" category, but Angelo's voice doesn't really match. The lyrics don't really match either; awkwardly phrased religious statements. Lines like "I pray to God for you/for myself as well" and titles like "Child of God" don't really appeal to me. I'm surprised to find that Angelo actually will visit Oslo on his umpcoming tour.

Paddy went solo 3 years ago as he released the album "In Exile" which features the hit single "Pray pray pray". (I even saw the video on Norwegian TV while flipping through channels) . He's shaven off his trademark long hair and seems more comfortable in a leather jacket than any of the hippie-inspired stuff he wore in Kelly Family's glory days.
His album partly has the same faults as Angelo's CD; songs that don't match his voice and lyrics that express religious beliefs in such a charismatic style that it scares people off rather than making them listen to the message. Other than that I'm almost ashamed to say that several tracks on the album are actually quite good, though again, Paddy's voice doesn't really compliment them.

Kathy, one of the older siblings, appears to have recorded several solo albums the last few years and has even released a "best of" compilation. In the albums she sings both English and Spanish songs, and I think the latter suits her voice best. It suddenly dawns on me why her voice seemed so strained and even shrill on some Kelly Family songs; it's a voice that seems to be trained for traditional Spanish singing and not really suited for pop - and certainly not the spiritual, grand ballads she tries to tackle on her album "Morning of my life".

The other Kelly Family members seem to have stayed in the band and released several albums, both studio and live recordings. The most recent one, "Homerun" from 2004 surprised me in the sense that they have traveled somewhat from the original Kelly sound. Maybe we should be thankful for that, then again maybe not - do we really need to hear the Kelly clan, with their not-so-big voices try to tackle jazz and soul? I'll say to their defense though that a change of image was indeed wise at this stage.