So you're new in town and don't understand the beat on the street, right? What's the best place to go to find out whatcha need? Simple. Catch a cab. The guy'll know where you wanna go without asking any more questions and the chances are he'll know everything from where the junkies are scoring to where you can get keys cut at midnight or find a place to crash when all the hotels are full.
And there's a good chance that if you're new in Sydney, Australia, you may well have ridden in the taxi of one PERRY KEYES. By day, cabbie for hire with a mine of information stored in his sharp mind, but by night a talented singer/ songwriter with a knack for turning the minutiae of everyday life into some of the most poignant and memorable songs you'll have heard in many a blue moon.
There are 18 such seething, vivid beauties spread liberally across the 2 CDS making up Keyes' debut album "Meter" and the quality of the playing, the emotional content of the songs and dynamite producer Michael Carpenter's skills behind the desk all conspire to ensure it'll end up arguably the most affecting album to run you down all year.
Keyes' turf is the tough, raw inner city areas of Sydney - Redfern, Alexandria and Waterloo amongst others - and his writing is always vivid, descriptive and economic, whether he's dealing predominantly in characterisations (for example, "Sandra's On Her Way" and its' rounded portrait of a relationship going down the tubes) or allowing us a lengthy, voyeuristic peek inside his own life and psyche (too many songs to easily pick one out, though the closing "Matraville Trees" is devastatingly good). Whatever the deal, though, these songs live and breathe and take the often vicious blows meted out by their environment, and by the time the generous 80 minutes comes to a halt you simply want to immerse yourself some more.
CD1 alone leaves you in no doubt that Perry Keyes is as adept at drawing upon his landscape as Bruce Springsteen is with his native New Jersey and Lou Reed and Jesse Malin are where New York's mean streets are concerned. Songs like the opening 1-2 of the no-nonsense power popper "Sweaty Sneakers" and "2nd Time I Saw You"s Stones-y groove instantly prove Keyes and his band "Give My Love To Rose" are damn good where gritty anthems are concerned, while Springsteen's spirit also hovers benignly over songs like the battered, witty love song "Vicious Left Hook" (dig Edmond Kairouz's Billy Zoom intro licks) and the brilliant "Wide Streets", which is the source of the album's 'fried chicken' cover concept.
But Keyes are co can do much more than rock, as tunes like "Service City" and the heart-rending "Some Aches" demonstrate. Musically, "Service City" is slow, plaintive and borderline folksy with drifting accordion supplied by the talented Kairouz, but Keyes' lyrics pull no punches whatsoever, and indeed the image of "this city's cut off at the legs/ Stoned boys beg, washing windscreens in the driving rain" only too perfectly captures the sheer hopelessness of many peoples' reality. "Some Aches", meanwhile, is a starker than stark portrait of doomed youth and drug dependency ("She met a boy named David, they'd shoot up in the park/ He'd meet her by the locked gates, they'd slip through the broken fence") framed by hauntingly lonely piano and that beyond-poignant chorus of "some aches never leave, but yours are all gone now...all gone now." It smashes into your heart like a demolition ball.
Actually, one of "Meter"s recurring themes is that of the expectation of youth going sour, and it returns to it with two more of CD1's best moments: "Growin' Up In The Dark Is Wrong" and the closing "NYE". Stark contrasts stylistically, "Growin' Up..." is a full-pelt rocker which still captures the abject awkwardness of lurching towards the adult world to a T, while "NYE" visits New Year's Eve celebrations through the eyes of a kid keen to grow up ("All the punks are lightin' fires, drinking long necks in the park/ Some girl's swimming in the fountain, singin' Buzzcocks in the dark") though he's sure to be disappointed when he gets there. It's disillusioned, yet warm all at once and coaxed along brilliantly by Perry's imploring voice.
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So far, so magnificent, but the outstanding news is that CD2 is actually every bit as potent once again. It hurtles off the blocks with one of the album's best pop moments thanks to the corking "Bonfires Of June", which has a chorus that whacks you in the heart and gut and a melody motif that would sound the biz on the radio. It's a great start, but the quality control is easily maintained by the pretty, aching guitar and keyboards of "Just Like A Steam Train" which shivers to perfection while Perry bemoans his latest infatuation with one of his best beaten'n'numbed-out vocals.
The band continue to prove their versatility with songs like "Have Some Fun" and "Where's My Darlin' Tonight?". Both of these dip their toes convincingly into Americana of sorts, with the first providing an aching, ballad-style backdrop for Keyes' story of losers, liars and conmen, while "Where's My Darlin...." takes it at a country-ish canter with our hero falling for some classic she-devil charms ("I was never one of the world's smartest guys and I often fell for other people's lies/ But I never saw them shinin' in your eyes") while Kairouz embroiders with some spidery, James Burton-style guitar.
At a push, though, "Meter" saves its' finest hat-trick for the last stretch and the killer trio of "Fairfield Girl", "When Things Wear Out" and "Matraville Trees". The first once again finds country shadowing Perry as a potent tale of soured romance, deception and violence is spun out to devastating effect. It's not half as dark as "When Things Wear Out", though, where a dummy-selling acoustic intro gives way to the kind of brooding, ominous rocker concerning domestic disharmony and murder that John Doe has done so well in the past.
So it's fitting that we should leave "Meter" in the cemetery and "Matraville Trees": Perry alone with his memories, feelings of love and loss and the inevitable sound of traffic still playing in his ears. Drummer Bek-Jean Stewart adds the throaty Emmy Lou Harris/ Patty Scialfa answering voice, and it's only right the last word should be allowed to this gorgeous, but terminally sorrowful song. It's one of the most emotional things this jaded hack has ever heard and if you don't well up yourself....well, then you must be made of solid granite.
Yet somehow you know Perry Keyes will get back up again, walk back to that old taxi, click on the "Meter" and rejoin the line of cars back to the tough, tender and addictive city. And do what he has to do to survive. If you're the lost soul who should happen to flag him down with your suitcase and a head full of hope, make sure to listen attentively to his advice and tip him copiously.
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