Tommy Keene - Crashing the Ether

Genre rock Publisher Eleven Thirty External Links Official Tommy Keene Website Official Eleven Thirty Website

The barreling drums resemble nothing short of Jody Stephens and the chiming guitar melodies are Chiltonesque in the best sense. These are not mod teenage symphonies however, but the knowing lyrics of a post British Invasion survivor. Tommy Keene and drummer John Richardson reminisce violently and urgently on Crashing the Ether. A nostalgic sound invoked for a nostalgic record. Grown men convincingly playing the music of their youth.

The guitars ring out as they would on a mid-period Replacements record and many of the songs would not be out of place on Pleased to Meet Me. "Eyes of Youth" in particular shares the biting prettiness that Paul Westerberg found on his bands final three albums.

Some songs are drawn out in a more modern style, sounding a more recent British sound in their swaggering, classical guitar drone. The guitar exercises "Texas Tower #4," "I've Heard That Wind Blow Before" and "Driving Down the Road in my Mind" resemble late Stone Roses or meandering Oasis; an excuse to give a talented player room to strut.

Vocally Keene relies on the high pinched jumble employed by fellow Chilton acolytes Chris Stamey and Mitch Easter. The sound is wholly nostalgic and allows his audience to revel in their expert sound rather than to dwell on the pedestrian lyrics. The song's themes are fitting in their back looking ways on "Black and White New York" and "Warren in the '60s" but the individual lines get heavy handed on the no mistaking it for anything but ham handed "Lives Become Lies."

Luckily, the sound is so pristine and exacting that the lyrical flubs can be ignored to a point. It blends so easily into the dB's and Let's Active records in your collection, it can be appreciated even for its powers of integration. It harkens back to the staples of the '80s power pop movement of which Keene was a member. However, it speaks to them with an older voice and a tougher, weathered approach to the guitar. Keene is not a moping nostalgic but a decent songwriter with a memory and a couple of life lessons picked up on the way.

The music is dramatic and tasteful. A pared back Psychedelic Furs, dropping the pretense and reveling in the ingrained quirks of voice and phrasing. It is so evocative of that model sound it is easy to forget who is singing and to hear it as a jangling whole. Even when the lyrics seem rote, it's a forgettable flaw and to borrow an appropriate cliché, we can find meaning in the voice and strum, an internal urgency best expressed through a yelping murmur and a quick-tempoed ringing guitar.