Keith: Lullaby
Lullaby is the latest single from Manchester’s Keith, and the second track from Vice & Virtue, the masterful sophomore album recorded with white-hot producer Dan Carey (Franz Ferdinand/Hot Chip). Built on dreamy pianos and jazzy drums, Lullaby is a breeze of pure escapism, its lyrics yearning for a better place.
“where should we go to, where should we go to?
to escape what they did to you. yeah what they did to you.
‘cos if a bomb drops at our gates, and it’s the last thing on your mind.
then we must away to somewhere no one can find”.
It’s a track truly capturing the album’s air of longing, a counterpoint to the over-riding theme of good and evil implied by its title.
“The longing for a change of environment comes with living in a confined place, be it a village or a city,” says singer / keyboard player Oli Bayston, “it’s particularly true of Manchester, which comes gift-wrapped with morose weather conditions. But some of the best art comes from the grimmest cities. Pleasure out of pain; vice and virtue.”
So once again Keith are creating their own vast sonic playground, and for all the experimental and cerebral moments, there’s no slacking off in their commitment to melody and groove. Their music is for both sides of the brain – the intellectual and visceral, the artistic and the mathematic, the virtuous and the vicious – and every beat of the heart. It’s eclectic but reigned in, and Lullaby sums up exactly what Keith have long had the potential to deliver.
And despite the track’s dreamlike title, Keith couldn’t be further from rest. With the impending release of Vice & Virtue on the horizon, the boys have already recorded its younger brother, a mini album in a Salford church. Yet another counterpoint to the album’s electronic sound and like Vice & Virtue’s songs and message, it’s all about contrasts.
“Music itself can be a vice or a virtue – it can be an addiction, the same as any relationship,” says Bayston.
And you should prepare to become addicted to the sound of this incredible band.
