**1/2 Nick Kelly

BETWEEN TRAPEZES

(Lunch)

Four years ago Ireland's Nick Kelly quit singing for The Fat Lady Sings and took a self-imposed hiatus from music. Eighteen months later he scrounged together enough money to record and release his first solo album, Between Trapezes, a testament to separation and self-reflection, which is now available in the US on the local Lunch label (run by Orbit drummer Paul Buckley). The title of the album refers to the instant at which a circus performer, having released one trapeze bar, takes a leap of faith and hovers in the air before catching the next one. Floating above a great chasm, Kelly lends his crisp, slightly strained voice to tracks that observe a world broken in two. The unobtrusive sounds of an acoustic guitar, a piano, and a violin complement his interconnecting stories. In the catchy, pop-folk "Lover's Easy To Say," Kelly asks, "Define your goals/Are they just wheels to speed you away from me and this world I build for us?" Searching for poetry in simple words and phrases, he seems to be finding a new perspective, and a new lease, on life.

-- Ian Pervil