Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are those who will damn a person for understanding melancholy, accusing them of pandering to the inevitability of the morose and the miserable as though it is a choice and not the sight of an empathetic soul who recognises that to relish the beauty of a spring day you have to live through, the expression of a Hard Frost with the same objective appreciation and consideration.
To deny the melancholic is to reject your own humanity, to live as though every day is sun and roses is to deny the truth of existence. You must live with the lies and use the dynamite to blast your way through the rocks in your way, and of that dynamite is made up of inevitability as much as it is nitro-glycerine.
To be explosive in your art is to utilise that inevitability in such a way that the project goes with a bang, the sound of the truth that wishes to be set free and uncontained; and it is one that Annie Keating employs with honour as she brings the sight of Hard Frost to the door of the listener, but also the promise of the artistic spring to come.
A modern pleasure of the Americana scene, the heartache Annie Keating has witnessed manifests itself in some of the most haunting and extraordinary music to be found. The voice is the conduit and explorer, it is the resonance of the soul as it searches for the reason in which humanity counts its time across seasons and finds ways to celebrate them all.
Through tracks such as the impressive Lies and Dynamite, Keepsakes and Heartbreaks, the superb Sunshine Parade, Wrong Guy’s Girl, and the finale of So Lonely, the listener is the recipient of flowers delivered, tunes that bloom even in the harshest of environments, and with guitarist/producer Teddy Kumpel accompanying Ms. Keating once again, that bouquet is appreciated and fragrant with positive mindset, an attitude of demand, and a bounty that melts even the iciest of hearts.
Hard Frost is a continuation of a heroine’s tale, a drama of music given a heartbeat which cannot be refuted or contradicted. For Annie Keating, this is the offer of succession to the dream she has cultivated with ambition and kindness, with honour. A sound of the exquisite.
Annie Keating releases Hard Frost on June 1st.
Ian D. Hall