By Anastasia Baker, Music Subeditor
‘Meteoric rise’ is one way to put it. Keo have fostered a cult following across the country in a matter of months - with chants and signature hats and banks of unreleased music clogging up everyone’s local files on Spotify, the identity of this band is beginning to transcend the influences that it was once said to have ripped off.
Kangol hats are all around me and Tramshed is full to its brim. The opener, Brooki, face almost a full capacity. They don't fail to the fate of the opening band in sounding small and disconnected and tinny: they are massive, great footfalls of sound, the lead’s voice ready to eclipse every other current artist given the chance.
'Give me a second, I can't breathe,' Sarah Brookfield sings in the fiery ender 'Amber', and I don't blame her: Brooki are powerful, those vocals demanding great depths of lungfulness, guitars crashing in on all sides. Apart from Keo and perhaps Bleech 9:3, I’d say these are going to be (and should be) bigger than anyone they’re opening for in the alternative scene at the moment.
Brooki are utilising this underground, elusive tactic of refusing to release music for as long as possible. There's clandestine banks of unreleased live recordings on Soundcloud, with fans positively begging for official release - this new marketing strategy seems to have worked for Keo, whose lead and namesake, Finn Keogh, is drowned out by the packed-in crowd.
The gig is emotional, everything of angst and the toxicity of youth - Keo begin with the first song off their very recent new album, the (I presume sarcastically? named) Put a Smile On For Me. It’s called (aptly) ‘Be Happy’, and captures the nihilistic undertones characteristic of Keo without being entirely a downer. It’s a hope to get better, not an assertion but wishful thinking: “I want to be happy / Just like you.” That’s probably the happiest they get - luckily for them, when it comes to music, depressing and enjoyable are mutually inclusive for me.
There's been a pattern on this Keo tour of some very vigorous moshing breaking the barrier and bringing a halt to the show. It might be a weird thing for me to hope there's not any moshing, but I cross my fingers as Finn Keogh shouts "That's me!" and the crowd surges forward with the first keening notes of their most explosive single. He instructs us "not to listen" to online discourse - namely, criticism about this almost competitive culture of moshing, in which seemingly 'unmoshable' songs are contorted to fit the crush by spirited, and sometimes aggressive, crowds. The result is a black-hole-like mosh, sucking its surroundings into a hungry vaccum; but, thankfully, the barrier remains intact.
Elsewhere, Keo’s lyrics are downtrodden by their own sense of toxicity: the youthful flaw of knowing something’s wrong but doing it anyway. There’s an uncomfortable reality in ‘Best I Can Do’, as the chorus slides between options: “You’re the best I can do…I’m the best you can do”, and the verse cuttingly speaks its mind - “I don’t wanna be alone/I don’t wanna be with you”, this catch-22 fear of loneliness and claustrophobia at the same time.
Katie Asha
It speaks of getting older, too - far-off prospects of settling in discontented marriages. This content matter really seems the basis for an excellent gig: the best I have attended seem to be those invested with the most emotion, and there's no lack of it here in the whine of lamenting guitars and the mournful yet rousing heights of Finn Keogh's coarse and untamed vocals.
Whilst there’s definitely a place for the rather frivolous anthems of those giants of the indie scene, whether it be The Wombats or The Libertines, it definitely isn’t on dark gig nights like these as winter draws in and Halloween casts shadows: it’s Keo season, and I’m unequivocally here for it.
Featured image: Epigram / Kieran FortWhat do you think of bands holding back on releasing music to build hype?
