Gossip by Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls

Gossip, the debut from Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls, came out on Mushroom in September 1986 as a sprawling double LP, 24 songs deep, co-produced by Kelly and Alan Thorne. Kelly had put the band together after moving to Sydney, borrowing its name from a Lou Reed lyric, and with Jon Schofield on bass and Peter Bull in the ranks they play with a lean, rootsy snap that lets the songs do the talking.

And the songs are the thing: sharp, observant snapshots of Australian life, somewhere between folk, rock and country. "Before Too Long" is the pick, a brisk, jangling pop-rock tune with a hook that won't quit, and "Darling It Hurts" makes a tough twin. Overseas, A&M trimmed it to a single album and billed the band as Paul Kelly and the Messengers, wary of how the original name might be read. In 2010 it ranked 7th in the book 100 Best Australian Albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.