Keeley
Interview conducted March 10, 2022
By Dan Locke
Irish Psychedelic Dreampop artist signed to London-based Indie label Dimple Discs.
Author of The Keeley Chronicles, the dedicated blog for the 1988 murder victim Inga Maria Hauser.
Produced by Alan Maguire during sessions for the debut Keeley long-player scheduled for release on Dimple Discs in 2022, the “Brave Warrior” EP contains four songs that demonstrate the multi-faceted songwriting smarts of one of Ireland’s most talked-about emerging bands and one which continues an unusual conceptual thread conceived several years ago
What is your upbringing?
I grew up having to move constantly, due to a very unsettled family life. By the time I was 15, I had moved house 13 times. By my mid-20s, that number had ballooned to 28 times. I learned that you can only build new friendships so many times until you reach an age where networks and cliques are much more established and much harder to infiltrate, especially when you’re a singular misfit type of a person (an artist, in other words! All true artists seem to be misfits). In my case that was at age 14, when it was a case of one move too many. As a result, I spent four years – from 14 to 18 – without a friend in the world, all the while I was being bullied and beaten-up, or worse, in school and at home. Probably the most important and vulnerable period of a person’s life in terms of a formative stage, it was the absolute worst time to be completely isolated and alienated. But that’s what I was, for four years. There was other dark stuff going on in my life at that time that made things even harder, and bleaker. All I had then was music. And that was what I most wanted. It burrowed a hole in my soul, never to leave.
How did you discover music?
I asked for a Walkman for Christmas and that was my doorway to another world, it opened up a sonic space that I could get totally lost in. This was a life-changing liberation for me as a child. I fell in love with chart music initially – the Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls was my favourite song, and their albums Please and Actually were my favourite albums, both of which I still love.
How did you start to write music?
I fell in love with The Smiths as a teenager, and that was my next epic eruption. The course of my life was set at that point. I would spend the rest of my life obsessed with, and devoted to, music.
What is your guitar of choice now? Year, make and model?
I play a rare and unusual guitar called an Italia Mondial. I bought it off the cat who built it by hand, a cat from Manchester named Trev Wilkinson around 2013. I constantly get asked questions about it because it doesn’t look anything like a Telecaster, a Strat, a Les Pauls or any of the other guitars which everyone else plays!
How did you end up in the band?
Ha, the short answer is I founded it! I placed ads online which is how I found both our bass player Martin and our producer Alan, and I knew both Marty and Tim, our keyboardist and drummer respectively, who I’d been friends with for years.
Describe your music.
To me, there are two distinct strands. One is blissful, and one is brutal. I’m a Gemini, and that duality is very much reflected in my and our music, with polar opposites interweaving to create a very effective equilibrium. The term I came up with to describe the sound I’ve always had in my head is “Psychedelic Dreampop”. There’s a dreamy quality, and a jangly quality, and also some very explosive elements, particularly live. We’ve been described as sounding like a modern cross between Pink Floyd and The Smiths, and I think that’s very accurate. The KEELEY maxim is “Bliss-out!” because the reason I formed the band was, in addition to wanting to pay a constant homage to Inga Maria Hauser, was in order to create more of the kind of music I need to hear, music that blisses me out. And I hope we bliss other people out. Life is stressful and pretty scary. The more I bliss-out, the better I feel.
What was your first performance at like?
Oh God it depends how far back you want me to go (laughs)! I performed at a school play when I was 9, but that was acting rather than music. My first music performance was aged 18 with my first long-term friend Neil, we gatecrashed a couple of pubs in Dublin on successive weekends and performed a rendition of Oasis’ Wonderwall that was probably atrocious (laughs). But even then, despite zero performing experience, I remember feeling extremely assured behind a microphone and in front of a crowd. I instantly knew how to do it, the inclination to perform came so naturally. But I had to spend a lot longer developing my nascent music talent which was pretty rough and rudimentary to begin with.
What is Irish Psychedelic Dreampop music?
Well we’re the only Psychedelic Dreampop band in Ireland really, there is no-one else in this country that sounds even remotely like us. And I’m a subscriber to the idea that “Great artists have no country” so I tend not to see things in nationalistic terms. Our bio refers to us as Irish rather than our music, which is more astral than national. Psychedelic Dreampop is a term I coined to describe the KEELEY fusion of Psych-Rock and Dreampop, with our signature swirling sound that’s very atmospheric and yet highly melodic.
With your debut EP “Brave Warrior”, where you surprise about the global positive reception you got?
Yes in a way, because it was our first release. But in another sense no, because I think it deserved to do very well.
How is the EP “Echo Everywhere” different from “Brave Warrior”?
Echo Everywhere definitely comes from a different dimension, sonically-speaking. Lyrically it concerns the exact same subject matter (the 1988 murder victim Inga Maria Hauser, whose cause has been an obsession of mine for the past 6 years and who all my songs are about) but each song tackles a different aspect of Inga’s story or of the investigation to track her killers. However, musically it’s even darker, more atmospheric and more epic than Brave Warrior. I love both Eps, but I think Echo Everywhere shows a clear progression forward.
How was it to work with Paul Tipler?
Great! Paul’s lovely, and such a brilliant mix engineer. He’s worked with everyone from Stereolab and Elastica to The House of Love and Julian Cope, all of whom I’m a very big fan of, so it was such a joy to have him mix my songs.
What is your favourite track on your album?
My favourite track on Brave Warrior (which is now out on 10” vinyl, in a limited-edition of 500 copies, and it’s such a beautiful package!) is track 2, Last Words, which was our debut single. My favourite track on Echo Everywhere is probably track 2, Never O’Clock. So two track 2’s!
Anything you would like to say in closing.
Just thanks for your interest, and thanks to your readers for taking the time to read about us! And please check us out, we’re @keeleysound on all the socials, and KEELEY on YouTube and all the digital platforms. Bliss-out, don’t miss out! x Keeley
KEELEY’s debut EP Brave Warrior is now available on super-rare 10” vinyl with a full-colour inner sleeve and in a limited-edition pressing of only 500 copies worldwide.
