SALON

Thursday, Feb 26, 1998 8:00 PM UTC

Sharps and Flats: Tommy Keene

By

Topics: Music,

Everyone knows someone whose taste in music has frozen in time: crazy aunts who listen exclusively to Elvis, bubba-like brothers who love Blue Oyster Cult. Critics tend to have contempt for such stick-in-the-mudness, but the truth is, all of us have a sound that sends us, spiritually speaking. For me, it’s the kind of jangle-pop typified by R.E.M.’s first five LPs, as well as that of their peers like the Dbs, the Feelies and Tommy Keene.

Of those acts, Keene has been simultaneously the most commercially promising — and the most invisible. Something about his music melts into thin air, despite the fact that songs like “Paper Words and Lies” and “Run Now” are at least as direct and as melodic as those of Squeeze, Ben Vaughan or Marshall Crenshaw. Keene’s personality isn’t exactly imposing, however: Upon winning the Pazz and Jop poll for his 1984 EP “Places That Are Gone,” he signed to Geffen, released two LPs, and all but disappeared from view.

In the ’90s, Keene’s profile hasn’t just been low, it’s been nonexistent — but all of a sudden, he has reappeared with an LP on the hip-groovy Matador label. “Isolation Party” sounds identical to his pretty and poignant mid-’80s work. It’s jangle pop, pure and simple, achy-lyric songs about outgrowing your girlfriend and getting dumped, surrounded by strummy backgrounds that are jammed with well-placed minor sevenths and open chord tunings that’ll make you murmur with delight.

Atmospherically, the record is a bit of a downer, a sick rumination on the past that verges, at times, on the bitterness of unsuccess. On “Love Dies Down,” for example, Keene keans, “We didn’t get very far in the endless stream of condemnation.” “Battle Lines” is a five-minute song about the folly of being an indie pop monster in 1982. And if you hadn’t gotten the drift of things already from the remarkably Paul Westerberg-esque song “Happy When You’re Sad,” there’s a Mission of Burma cover (“Einstein’s Day,” rendered as if MOB had been a pretty-pop, rather than an atonal big guitar band) that indicates exactly what era Keene is stuck in.

Musically, Keene’s songs go down real easy. Where they fail is lyrically, since his turn of phrase is strangely unmemorable. For the most part, “Isolation Party” is relentlessly mid-tempo, relatively beatless and definitely unedifying, full of the type of music that has never gone over big on the radio (except, for some reason, when purveyed by Hootie and the Blowfish). And the truth is that 1998 is no more or less propitious toward the stuff than any other era has been.

But you know what? If this is the stuff that gets you where you live, then that’s all there is to it. You must buy this album now and indulge it as if was a big ol’ box of bad-for-you chocolate; as if you’d never heard the Beastie Boys, DJ Shadow or Beck. The man must be my personal Blue Oyster Cult — able, with a quick flick of a Rickenbacker, to set my spirit humming.

Gina Arnold is a columnist at the East Bay Express in Berkeley, Calif., and the author of the just-released book "Kiss This: Punk in the Present Tense" (St. Martin's Press). More Gina Arnold.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
281 points282 points | 58 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
250 points251 points | 10 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
195 points196 points | 1 comment
vote
Today in How Did I Miss This: Iowa GOP is pushing to cut the pay of the remaining Supreme Court Justices that voted for legalization of gay marriage.
82 points83 points | 8 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
55 points56 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations