When you get caught into a music style (or quite a few of them) when you’re younger, they seem to stay with you forever. Psychedelic pop, harmony rock or power pop are some of mine. Practically, the ones mentioned refer to more or less the same music, name changing with the times.
Power pop seems to be the one that stuck the most. But they all seem to have a few things in common, harmony vocals, distinct, usually chiming guitars and clear melodies with other elements there serving more or less as garnish. Including the lyrics which can be really good or inconsequential. All in all, it all boils down to the love of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, you can keep adding names to the list.
In more recent times you can think of names like XTC, Supergrass, and Nick Lowe, on one side of the Atlantic, and Jellyfish, that group’s former member Jason Falkner or Cheap Trick on the other.
And that is where Dave Keegan and his debut album comes in. Dave sounds like all of the above-mentioned names (“Harbour City Blues” here could definitely be a forgotten Nick Lowe track) in equal measures and he does do all of them justice.But then comes the question - Dave who? Exactly. That is what I thought when “Hello”, the aptly named opener here caught my ear. Finding information on the guy was like doing some heavy research on the new developments in cyber science, and his personal website is as if he wants to keep more information to himself than share it with others.Something did crop up though. Keegan has been making a name for himself on the local scene in York (the old one, not the new megalopolis on the other side of the pond), and as mentioned the music he makes sounds like it is exactly in between the British Isles and the continent on the other side of the ocean.
I’ve no idea whether Dave Keegan is a shy guy and that is why, his site is so minimal and he’s hiding behind those giant Day-Glo glasses on the cover of the album that took him ten years to come up with, or that he simply took his own sweet time. I do know though that his album is the one I’ve been playing quite often these hot summer days. All you need along with it is a cool drink.
