At age six, when his friends were getting G.I. Joe for Christmas, young Kieran McGee's father gave him a cassette of Robert Johnson, and gave Kieran's older brother a Guns N' Roses cassette. "I immediately liked both albums," Kieran recalls, "but Robert Johnson was the more lasting impression, I think." The bipolar extremes of rock and folk - the King Of the Delta Blues and hair-metal's primal scream - have been the heart and soul of Kieran's music ever since. Along with the influences that have washed up on the rocky shore of his life - Woody Guthrie, Skip James, Black Flag, Nirvana, the Carter Family, and of course Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones - Kieran McGee is, as one New York journalist proclaimed, "the real thing."
ANONYMOUS, the third full-length album by 23-year old Kieran McGee, builds on the experiences that coursed through his 1997 debut, Left For Dead, and its independently released follow-up of 2001, Ash Wednesday. The new album picks up on themes of faith (religious and otherwise, in "Faithless" and "Good Enough"), self-worth ("Waiting For a Friend," "I Guess I Lied Again"), dangerous girls ("Odessa," "Big Surprise"), the stillness of death ("Quiet"), ghosts ("The Second Time"), guilt ("Hope"), more than one breakup ("Losing You Again"), more than one drug overdose of a close friend ("Don't Lie Down," "Anonymous"), and the Myth Of Sisyphus ("Lonesome Road").
The new album was produced by Steve Rosenthal, known for his recent work in the studio with Ollabelle, the homegrown group signed to T-Bone Burnett's DMZ label (via Columbia Records). Ollabelle's rhythm section (bassist Byron Isaacs, keyboardist and guitarist Jimi Zhivago, drummer Tony Leone) accompanies Kieran throughout most of ANONYMOUS, proving themselves on tunes that range from twangy country ballads to bashing rock numbers to the bruised and bloody title track. "Lonesome Road" turns into a Woody Guthrie road song hootenanny with banjo, guitar, mandolin, dobro and a spirited singalong chorus.
The drum seat for the opening number, "Faithless," is taken over by the legendary Levon Helm of The Band. Levon's daughter Amy Helm is one of the two female vocalists in Ollabelle, and she adds a sweet Virginia touch to "Odessa." Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley shows up on four tracks, and lets it thrash on "The Second Time" and "Big Surprise." "Don't Lie Down" and "Waiting For a Friend" feature Southern blues guitar phenom Sean Costello (who is only a year older than Kieran, and cut his first album a year before Kieran's, which makes them contemporaries). Guitar chores on nearly all the remaining tracks are handled by Kieran's longtime accompanist Jeremiah Lockwood.
The exceptions are the moody "Quiet," an elegy which Kieran fingerpicks on acoustic guitar accompanied by Zhivago on keyboard; and "Hope," a solo by Kieran on guitar and lavaliere harmonica, a traditional folk style he's been working on for some time. It happens to be a song that he wrote when he was 16, and he is frankly amazed that he had the balls to put it on an album that's coming out when he's 23.
"I hope that people can relate to at least some of the things that I'm talking about. What I like to do, not always successfully, is write about a specific thing that has happened to me, but write it in a way that can be universal. People can read into it what they want without having to know exactly what I'm talking about. I can say what I want, but at the same time, not isolate myself from the person who is listening to it.
ANONYMOUS is the latest album release from Stanton Street Records, a new label introduced in 2003 by The Living Room on New York's Lower East Side. The first-look music club has built a reputation as the launching pad and safe haven for such names as Norah Jones, Jesse Harris, Dayna Kurtz, Jesse Malin, Julia Darling, and other singer-songwriters based around the city. At the ripe old age of 23, Kieran McGee is in pretty good company.
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