Sean Kiely - Postcards of the Reckoning
Jersey City-based art-folk songwriter Sean Kiely is releasing Postcards of the Reckoning this fall. Eight songs about starting over. Featuring an incredible lineup of musicians and collaborators, including Bobby Hawk (Taylor Swift, Clairo), Bill Campbell (Andrew Bird, Chris Morrissey), Jared Engel (Tony Trischka, Abigail Washburn), Maddie Witler (Della Mae), Minnie Jordan, Elizabeth Ziman, Jean Rohe, and Abbie Gardner (Red Molly).
“Postcards of the Reckoning chronicles a vexed period in the songwriter’s life, lived at a brutal time in the history of the world, right in the heart of a place as turbulent as Jersey City. The author of these tales has taken some hits. We all have. Remarkably, he hasn’t retreated an inch. Instead, he’s had his reckoning, and he’s taken a step forward: toward the world beyond the Hudson, toward brighter skies, toward other people. He never stopped singing. He hasn’t stopped following his muse down dangerous alleys. He’s still on his feet. And he’s surrounded by friends.” – Tris McCall
Right at the beginning of Reckoning, the Jersey City folk-rocker Sean Kiely sings about the unswerving arrival of a moment of revelation. Kiely’s narrator is visited by a clear and brutal reality. Though he tries to hide it from sight, soon enough, it’s back in his bare hand. The language Kiely uses to describe this experience is spare, poetic, and elegant, because that’s how he always approaches his storytelling. But the thing he’s describing is anything but clean. It’s trouble he’s singing about on Postcards of the Reckoning, and no matter how beautiful the album sounds, or how light his touch, there’s no disguising it. And so he brings us echoes, song after song, of dangerous things past, and brings us, firmly, to the present moment — a lonesome, mournful clock-tick that contains all the decisions that led to it.
Renowned locally as the center of the Jersey City folk & bluegrass scene, recipient of the Jersey City Arts Council Individual Artist Award, and regionally as a winner of the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance’s 2024 Songwriting Contest for Reckoning, Kiely is ready for the national stage with his latest collection of songs.
Featuring poetic, deeply-affecting lyrics, and a pristine production with unexpected yet inevitable twists and turns, Postcards is comprised of eight quietly devastating songs for starting over. Sean Kiely matches stories of human beings in transition to music that is gentle but stubbornly unusual — full of pivots, compositional left turns, and unexpected note and chord choices. Though he and his collaborators never sound drilled, the tracks on Postcards are impeccably performed, evocative of folk traditions, but more often redolent of the Jersey City waterfront at night than of the woods. Kiely is pleasantly uncompromising: friendly and approachable, but sharp- toothed. Attitude hums and hisses in his grooves.
There’s heartbreak that’s both personal and universal in standouts ‘Reckoning’ and the elegiac ‘Hold Me Out (or, Hold Me In)’. There’s wistful acceptance in ‘The Times Old Rag’ and ‘One More’. There’s rebirth in the transcendent album opener ‘Irises’, and broader social commentary in the rousing ‘All Of Them Singing’
Sean Kiely is an in-demand guitarist and songwriter in the NJ/NYC acoustic music scene. He has hosted a weekly bluegrass session at downtown Jersey City’s The Archer for nearly eight years, since early 2017. He writes, records, teaches, and is often a touring sideperson for dobroist Abbie Gardner. His first record Your Logo, My Logo (2015) was reviewed by No Depression as “one of those sublime and unassuming efforts that sneaks up on you until you find it won’t let go.