Cloaks And Daggers

The Drogheda-based TheKeds have been hanging about for around 10 years like stalkers threatening to perpetrate some horrible deed, but rarely doing anything much to justify your concerns. Until now, that is. Here, they’ve delivered what their attitude has promised for so long, an album big on attitude and even bigger on choruses, a store full of jagged guitar riffage and a lyrical maturity way beyond their years. From the get-go, the album rampages all over your hi-fi like a demented teenager. ’19 to 25’ is a blistering opening track; ‘No Sense In It’ is one of the best slices of punk-pop to come out of Ireland in ages. The incendiary and emotive ‘27 Years’ is their tribute to rock’s fallen heroes (especially those who died at that tender age). ‘Blues Eyes’ knows no limit to its exuberance.
When they ease off the pedal, as on ‘Disillusioned’, TheKeds bring us echoes of '50s and '60s pop welded to an urgent third-millennium sensibility.
Best of all, the band plays both fast and loose with equal verve, boasting vocalists who sing with proper Irish sneers rather than the imported varieties. Just occasionally the mask slips, as on ‘So Long’, which sounds a shade too close for comfort to the U23 era U2.
All told, with influences that range from Blink 182 to Eels, U2, The Sex Pistols and Rancid, TheKeds still manage to sound irrepressibly like no Irish band before them, and they make one helluva joyful noise too. TheKeds may be alright, but don’t forget, they know where you live.