The 90s are back! And while for many this means harking back to the glammy, cokey, arseholey world of fashion parties and the Met Bar and Loaded, for others, this means grunge. Plaid shirts, unwashed hair, and black moods that last for months. For these people, Keo are the new anti-messiahs, a London four-piece with heavy riffs, reluctant big choruses, and a line in self-loathing that its like Kurt’s curtains are swinging again.
“I just a loser, I’m best alone,” mutters frontman Finn Keogh on Loser and I’d wager there’s many thousands of teenagers in doomscrolling no-future desolations who’ll be clinging hard to these sentiments. But the best thing about their debut album Put A Smile On For Me is that, as with the very best grunge records, they have mastered dynamics to bring light and shade to their songs which brings a compulsive brilliance to it.
So while the opening pulverising Be Happy and That’s Me (”That’s me, I’ve become a fucking plague”) set up the tortured, raging aesthetic, they also contain the super-sensitivity that always underpinned Cobain’s work, and this leads them into territory that isn’t purely for the mosh pit.
Fly carries a gorgeous melody which shows off the honey within the gravel of Keogh’s voice, while Black Dress could be off Pixies’ Surfer Rosa with its sonic twisting around self-torture, and Blue Song stretches out from trauma ballad into existential epic. And that’s the real trick: turning the deeply personal and intimate into something stadium-sized.
Keo are heading for big things - grow your hair, quit your job, and follow them all the way.
Keo play live at O2 Kentish Town Forum on October 30 and O2 Academy Brixton on March 12
