It Sure Was Good
Sean Kiely makes music that's quietly disobedient – it never does exactly what you think it's going to do. Note by note, measure by measure, these luminous songs lure you into a deep and mysterious thicket. Credit goes to bassist Bobby McCullough and drummer Dave Heilman, a pair of aces who play with sympathy, grace, and imagination, and Kiely himself, who has turned into one of Jersey's best and most bewitching folk-rock poets.
TRIS McCALL
Kiely's songwriting takes the listener to a place high above the astral plane, a place of comfort and warmth, glimpsed at in dreams but always unable to describe when conscious.
PAT BYRNE WFMU
The modern folk music of America
On his new EP "It Sure Was Good", NJ singer/songwriter Sean Kiely blends the personal and historical, expressing his own feelings of being adrift in life and love through a poetic imagining of the experience of the settlers of the mysterious Lost Colony of Roanoke (a story from history that has always fascinated me!). These lyrical themes blend perfectly with Sean's delicate fingerpicking and melodic touch. The dreamy production, with atmospheric pedal steel, shuffling snare drums and bubbling synths, completes the intimate, conceptual folk package.