Perry Keyes - Meter (Laughing Outlaw Records)
The only other cabbie I know of with a 'hidden' talent, was Fred Housego who won Mastermind back in the days when it was chaired by Magnus Magnusson. That list has just doubled with the inclusion of Sydney taxi driver and, far more importantly, talented singer/songwriter Perry Keyes. After listening to his excellent debut album, Meter, quite why he is still employing Australia's version of The Knowledge is a mystery. I suspect that once Meter comes to the attention of public and critics alike, if you ring for Perry Keyes and he says, 'I'm just turning into your street' don't believe him, his cabbying days are surely numbered.
Meter is a songwriter's album, that's not to say that Keyes the singer doesn't the songs justice, he does. In fact the strength of Beer and Cigarettes, for example, is that it's being expressed by the man who wrote it and experienced it. However the writing is so expressive and honest that it's that which dominates.
There's a wonderfully fragmented feel to Meter. Nowhere on the album is there the sense that these songs were particularly written to go together for commercial reasons. The suspicion is that it's a double album so that Perry Keyes can bring the listener up to date with his life and work in one go. Within that 'framework' (or more correctly lack of) there is a kind of chronology. The first four songs of side one are full of the angst and urgency of youth. The appeal of 2nd Time I Saw You is derived from its slightly self-conscious awkwardness, it captures perfectly the universal fumblings of young love.
Having completed the pubescent catharsis with the towering Some Aches, a more rounded and surer Perry Keyes emerges like a butterfly from a chrysalis. The next 'section' sees a musician that would fit right into the cynical and acerbic world of 80s new wave Britain, a fact epitomised by the definitely Costello-esque (Elvis not Lou) Vicious Left Hook.
But the journey is only half done and disc 2 exposes an ever-maturing Perry Keyes, here is a musician aware of what it is he wants to say and how he wants to say it.
On Fairfield Girl, Perry Keyes casts his eyes West, or in his case East and as the album unfolds he moves from introspection to Americana. For Perry Keyes, Meter is all about beginnings, it shows an insightful, intelligent and intuitive writer and a musician who refuses to submerge his own songs in a sea of over production. He has left Meter pretty much as nature intended, at times it is positively minimalist and the better for it.
His cabbying days may be drawing to a close but Perry Keyes's musical future is bright.
Michael Mee