Keywest: The Message

Great things are expected from this north Dublin pop rock outfit (with the emphasis on pop) who’ve certainly been putting in the miles (and the hours) over the past couple of years. As well as appearing at big name events – opening for The Black Eyed Peas at Oxegen and scoring several awards nominations in the ‘Most Promising’ category – their tireless endeavours have included a tour of secondary schools and a stint busking in the streets! This LA-recorded debut comes with co-production by the band themselves and Mark Needham, whose credits include Blondie, Ronan Keating and The Killers among a long list of pop and rock luminaries. With its glossy sheen and note-perfect vocal harmonies The Message is clearly aimed at a young audience – the 11 tracks here are almost clinically calculated to induce the kind of mass appeal enjoyed by likes of The Script. They may just pull it off too – the songs are, for the most part strong, if predictably derivative, and the band can play their hearts out.
While they claim influences as diverse as U2, Snow Patrol and Keane, the guitars, bass and drums are mostly outflanked in the mix by piano, keys and strings, while lead vocalist Andy Kavanagh’s voice is heavily processed in that audience-friendly way that seems to dominate daytime radio.
That said, ‘Feels So Cruel‘ (co-written with Aaron Kamin from The Calling) has a definite ‘With Or Without You’ feel, while the staccato rhythm on ‘Road To Damnation’ gives a nod to the even more experimental side of U2 (‘Numb’). But mostly The Message concentrates on slowly-building-into-a-crescendo, lighter-waving, ballads, with soaring melodies, big choruses and lyrics of the, “When I look in your eyes...” variety. ‘Messages From God’ is just one of many such numbers here, while the epic title-track builds from a plaintive piano and strings intro into an overload of voices, textures, with some very familiar sounding ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’-style guitar riffage. Get your iPhones out now!