Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
If you can find an artist who provides atmosphere as well as thought, then hold on to them for dear life, for they have been endowed with the ability to make an audience and a solo listener plumb the depths of beauty, melancholic grandness and the urge to walk down many roads holding their hands.
Like James Joyce with the seminal collection of stories Dubliners, Tony Hancock whose portrayal of idealised, fantasised grandeur and bombastic posture betraying a shallow exterior captured the heart of a nation or Spike Milligan whose sense of the anarchic characterised deftness and the fragility of madness, all could weave a story to which would illuminate the darkest of alleys with the fog of human decadency and decency and the orange light of concern thrown in for good measure; it is an honour upheld with the inscrutability, the mystique of performance by David Keenan and his debut album, A Beginners Guide To Bravery.
Bravery can be shown in two ways, and for the most heroic, the natural tendency of the on-looker is to decry, to lay false premise at the feet of those who have displayed the fearlessness of progression, of standing up to deliver what they believe. After all, it takes boldness to even stand up in this world and sing a song of regret and beauty, and for those that criticise without compassion, it can only be decided they have never read a guide on how to be gallant, let alone brave.
The poet that resides within the beat of two hearts is one to savour and across songs such as the album’s opening track James Dean, the poetic fury of Love In A Snug, the first single Tin Pan alley, Origin Of The World and the excellent album finale in Subliminal Dublinia, what can be discerned without fear is that bravery can withstand the deepest cuts engraved by the savage critic; that as former United States of America President, Theodore Roosevelt once proclaimed, “It is hard to fail, but it worse never to have tried to succeed.â€
Never timid, always brave, David Keenan is the example of bravery we should all look to for inspiration.
David Keenan’s debut album A Beginners Guide To Bravery is released on January 17th via Rubyworks.
Ian D. Hall