I was lucky enough to see Keep live last year. They were playing the They’re Gonna Be Big festival in Paris. While I personally am delighted to have been able to catch their (flawless) set and to get to meet the band right after, the ‘gonna be‘ feels like it was a waste of breath and poster space. With ten years, three full lengths and a bunch of EPs scattered behind them, Keep are not new to the scene. Then again, for all their experience, they are also wayyyyy too accessible. I was the first one at the merch table that day and I didn’t have to elbow a single other person to get there. It’s weird. Keep should already be big.
They seem to be on the way though. Their first EP Hypnosis for Sleep was out in 2014 and the reactions at the time were more than encouraging. We then needed to wait till 2017 for them to release their first LP, For Your Joy (though we did get the excellent Psychorama in the interim). For Your Joy must have made some waves as well, because I found a snippet of an article I had started (but never published) from around the time of its release. But I think I – and a lot of us – only really sat up and took notice of Keep in 2023 with the release of Happy in Here.
What did it for you? My trigger was ‘In The Deep’ – a terrible choice because I’ll never get to hear it live. ‘In the Deep’ isn’t made to hype up a small, expectant crowd in an intimate venue. It’s built for headphones and solitude and it’s only the strongest among us who can stop themselves from circling, spiraling, sinking into it. Me, I’m weak.
Keep have mastered the art of melancholy, treading a hazy slackline between distance and intimacy. Is it because their vocalist is stashed behind a drumkit at the back of the room that his voice floats over to us like something from a midnight reverie? Or is the feeling engineered, does it come from a place of purpose and intent?
It’s sooooo easy to lose yourself to Keep. I keep coming back to Happy in Here, convinced that this time I’ll be over it. But it doesn’t get boring and I just end up drifting along its wisps and echoes and each time feels a little bit like the first time.
There are two kinds of Keep tracks – there are the driving, dark, post-punk inspired ones (like ‘Air’ up there). And then there are the mellower, twinkly – but still dark – shoegaze ones, (like ‘Start to Wonder’ down here). I love both Keeps, but I’ll always gravitate towards the latter’s grime and grunge.
Almost Static, released a couple of months ago, is Keep settling into their sound. It’s a natural, polished successor to Happy in Here, which itself radiates a self-assurance we hadn’t heard in previous releases. The tracks on Almost Static are punchy, unapologetic and… way too short?
Album opener and lead single, ‘Fun Facts’, is That Track™ – so clean, so hooky, and so true to Keep and their ✨vibe✨. Its structure is as perfect as a pop song’s. It’s also about as short as one. At just over two and a half minutes it sucks you in with immaculate interplay between verse, bridge and chorus. And then, just as you’re getting ready for round two, it crumples into a little ball of distortion and tosses itself out, leaving you to finish up on your own. It’s not fair. You deserve longer. WE deserve longer.
You don’t really get the time to wallow in the injustice of it all, though. You almost don’t get the time to breathe as ‘Smile Down (Into Nothing)’, ‘Decoy’ and ‘Bermuda’ – all cut from the same cloth as ‘Fun Facts’ – come hammering down on you with their louds and softs, their slows and fasts, their tension and release.
Their successor, ‘New Jewelry’, isn’t like that, and it’s my favourite example of Keep’s mastery of the bridge. If this was any other track, I’d consider it pretty standard slow-gaze. But there’s this ONE line that pops up right in the middle. It lasts something between 5 to 7 seconds – and that one line elevates the entire track to mythic status. You’ll know it when you hear it, (but if you don’t it’s 1:53 – 2:00).
Strong sonic identifiers make a comeback on the grim ‘No Pulse’ which could easily have been the album’s lead single, but I suspect the janglier, poppier ‘Sodawater’ was the more accessible choice. There’s also a track called ‘Gasoline’ which is evidently infallible because when has any song named ‘Gasoline’ not been a banger?
Closer ‘Hurt a Fly’ is the album showcase track on Bandcamp, but I’m not quite sure why because, while it is excellent as a final track, it is not an album-definer to me the way the first four are.
Keep are back in Paristown this autumn, and I couldn’t be more excited. They’re going to be opening for Slow Crush. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Slow Crush and I’m thrilled to see them play live. But I’ll be honest – I got the tickets for Keep.
One reply on “Always louder than before: Keep”
“It’s built for headphones and solitude and it’s only the strongest among us who can stop themselves from circling, spiraling, sinking into it.” That is such a beautiful descriptor for a beautiful song that will be largely unknown by the masses but somehow adored all that much more as a result by those who have had it adorned upon their ears. Many of my most favorite artists have never received the recognition they so clearly deserve, and I’ll never quite understand that myself, but I genuinely believe that most people want to feel, but they don’t really want to feel TOO MUCH. I’ve literally heard people say they don’t want to listen to music that makes them think too much. Ultimately, that says more about those people than the music that does lend itself to deep feeling and thinking. It is rare to see someone these days so impacted and inspired by music that they take the time to write paragraphs about it, but it is a wonderful return to form to see it happen still from time to time, such as it was done so masterfully here!