On his debut album, Jack Keyes runs tears from the tap of indie-folk until the water turns clean. What emerges is crystal clear beauty, melancholy, and charm.
There is an innate beauty in sadness. But it goes beyond simple comforts, there is something so grounding about the seduction of misery. It’s a return home, it’s a reaffirmation of identity: because to be sad, means that your equilibrium has, in some way, been disrupted. On his debut album, Jack Keyes captures this enchantment.
Painting his journey in misty, lilac tones, the Kentucky-based songwriter transports us back to a place long lost, one that is individual to us all. And he does so with no need for theatrics. His way with melody and lyrics evokes a yearning in all of us for solace, for affirmation, for re-stability within ourselves. Like the smell of jasmine in the spring or the liminal warmth of mid-summer, The Moon Is Too High delivers us home.
A pained nostalgia buries itself at the heart of The Moon Is Too High. The misty, lo-fi sequences, his yearning vocals, the tape machine filtered melodies that threaten to fracture at any given moment. But they don’t. Instead, Keyes wades forward towards the past, armoured by vulnerability and a swirling current of beat poetry.
Where songs like Summertime Funeral holds their weight under choral majesty, others like To the Moon are delicate and deeply stunning.
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“This album, as a whole, deals with themes of ‘getting out’ of circumstances you don’t want to be in. It feels timely. There is a lot of escapism in the lyrics,” the artist explains.
If you’re looking to melt away from reality, even for just a second, do so to the gossamer tones of Jack Keyes debut album:
