Mancunian Monsters of Rock, or just Music Production course grads? Somewhere in between, for now...
At times it sounds as if they've come from a Music Production course and at times it sounds as if they've come from the real-life back-allies of Manchester's music scene, and the thing is both are similarly quite true. The Mancunian Keith are a pretty hot tip in their home city, and are apparently the band to see and the band to be seen seeing.
Red Thread comes out of a decision met to introduce the world to a Keith long-player after a final list of tracks couldn't be decided upon for the EP they were working on. It's the follow-up to 2005's Hold That Gun EP and encompasses a fair variety of musical styles that are brought together to form a sort of Northern-feeling showcase
There's all sorts melded into their sound, Stone Roses-esque vocal wizardry, Verve-like guitars, Oasis epics, Smiths' rhythms and a bit of Happy Monday's piano stabs, as can be heard on the stand-out 'Mona Lisa's Child'. But it's a conglomerate that just lacks something, just dips under the mark; it's like a man well-learned in a craft who fails on delivering the essential passion to make it essential to the world now.
They see themselves as the red thread that links all different types of music together, from dace to indie to folk, but there doesn't seem to be enough of an intrinsic feel for those musics in the result of their Red Thread tying up this bundle. Dance-indie has never been very good, never lived up to it's name or deserved it, and the only band that got near doing something cool there was The Music and this doesn't have the energy of the music The Music made.
But that's not saying it's not accomplished, it is. It won't, however, get you up and dancing, which is the point of dance, even melded with indie, surely that's still be the point. It's nearly there though on 'Hold That Gun' and on 'Faces' when it breaks down into the groovy bit, but the beat is still quite boring and lacklustre, there's just a gaping whole in need of filling.
The album carries on after 'Faces' with snippets of good ideas here and there, and a fairly exciting promise that something good could come of Keith in the future, but for now, no. There's a slight lack of identity in the music, which (braces for the backlash) often comes out of groups founded in music production courses, not always, as in the case of iLiKETRAiNS, but it does happen to be a trend. Still, on this record 'The Miller' is the exception to that rule... It's more than the End Of Year recorded CD, but it's not quite there yet, though I do reckon it could there, so keep an eye out at least.