Comedy is notable for several reasons, one being that it’s a double album, Kelly’s second after 1986’s Gossip. More pertinently, though, it was the last with his backing band The Messengers, with Kelly disbanding the line-up to explore new creative pastures. (They were, however, featured on an album of B-sides and unreleased songs, Hidden Things, which came out in 1992.) The record also features one of the singer’s most enduring tracks in “From Little Things Big Things Grow”, his collaboration with Kev Carmody that tells the story of Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji people’s struggle for land rights. “That song started with the image of Gough Whitlam pouring dirt into Vincent Lingiari's hands, so that was a visual image to kick that song off,” Kelly tells Apple Music. “It's a really powerful photo.” Elsewhere Kelly ruminates on familiar themes of love, life and regret, with the country-tinged “I Can’t Believe We Were Married” reflecting on a relationship’s decline from early passion to polite post-split civility, while “Sydney from a 727” riffs on the beauty of the city from a plane window at night and the spontaneity of just picking up and leaving. The wistfully nostalgic “Wintercoat” is a heavy-hearted number that uses the titular garment as a metaphor for the passing of time and relationships, the coat holding “all the stories I don’t remember anymore”. It was the first of Kelly’s songs to catch the attention of Aotearoa New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams, who many years later would contribute to 2021’s Paul Kelly’s Christmas Train. “In about 2004, Dad brought home an Uncut magazine from the library,” he tells Apple Music. “The accompanying CD had ‘Wintercoat’ on it. I burned it to my computer and played that song over and over again.” The album concludes not with the colourfully titled “Little Boy Don’t Lose Your Balls”, but with a hidden track called “David Gower”, continuing the singer’s penchant for immortalising his sporting heroes, this time to the tune of Cuban song “Guantanamera”.