Album review: David Keenan - A Beginner’s Guide To Bravery
Album cover for A Beginner's Guide To Bravery by David Keenan. - Credit: Archant
A strong, evocative debut from the Irish singer-songwriter.
The seeds of singer-songwriter Keenan's musical growth were sewn as a young boy, perhaps piqued by the discovery of his uncle's guitar in the wardrobe of his granny's house, a visit to the Ulster Folk Museum, hearing Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley, Nick Cave and Dinosaur Jr - and, later, The Libertines on the school bus.
There weren't many prospects for him in Dundalk, a small border town halfway between Dublin and Belfast, so at 17 Keenan bought a one-way ticket to Liverpool to find his idols and learn his craft, busking to pay for his hostel accommodation and playing open nights at The Lomax, honing his way with a pop melody, folk arrangements and poetic couplets.
Support slots with John Power, Damien Dempsey and, more recently, Hozier, would eventually follow, and this debut was recorded in a studio on the outskirts of Dublin in just a week.
It is incredibly well composed, with assured performances and an obvious commitment to give each song its due - several sail past the six-minute mark, and justify it.
You may also want to watch:
Filled with characters and aphorisms culled from his 26 years, snatched from Dundalk pubs or his own family's past, the songs are rich and evocative.
There are suggestions of Jeff Buckley in Keenan's vaulting vocals, Damien Rice in his maudlin but catchy melodic turns and arrangements, and Ed Harcourt in his intelligent and poetic lyricism.
Most Read
- 1 Queens Birthday Honours List 2021: MP Meg Hillier and poet Lemn Sissay among those recognised
- 2 Phone snatcher admits guilt after robberies in Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets
- 3 Woman accused of murdering man in Hackney appears in court
- 4 5 great places in north London to watch England's Euro 2020 campaign
- 5 Diane Abbott to join 'Geffrye Must Fall' protest at museum reopening
- 6 Ridley Road market mask hero helps Hackney people through the pandemic
- 7 Hackney could lose Dalston ward to Islington under proposed redrawing of electoral map
- 8 The Museum of the Home 'welcomes peaceful protest' over Geffrye statue
- 9 Woman charged with murder after Stamford Hill fatal stabbing
- 10 Missing: Highgate woman known to frequent Camden and Islington areas
The record opens with James Dean, Keenan alone on acoustic guitar, and closes with a surging crowd-sung coda in the anthemic frustrations of Subliminal Dublinia (in which he calls on everyone to "occupy the city with original ideas").
In between, he paints vivid vignettes rooted in his Irish history (the acerbic, gloaming Good Old Days that casts aside rose-tinted glasses), to reverie of exotic new experiences (the intimately pared-back, Buckley-esque reverie Eastern Nights).
Love In A Snug waxes and wanes majestically from intimate, emotive confessional ("Tuesday morning is dawning, I'm still stood in my Sunday best") to a catchy, pub-filling anthem with fiddles, piano, guitar, drums and a throng of voices.
Keenan's debut is accomplished, assured, ambitious and evocative - check it out.
Rating: 4/5.
David Keenan plays the Moth Club, Valette Street, Hackney, on March 17.
