A treasure chest of vintage retro slow fused crackers, all topped by a dark deep swamp of a voice, tailed by the passion of experience.

Release Date: 31st May 2024

Label: Continental Song City

Format: CD / digital

Jim who might be the standard response on this side of the pond, this American musician, producer, manager, publisher, and composer being much better known at home than abroad. Unfamiliar with his previous stab at fame, in band Tommy Tutone, who racked up a US number four single in 1982 with 867-5309/Jenny, I have at least heard of Philip Glass, for whom Keller ran both his publishing company and managed, subsequently taking on other clients as varied as both Ravi and Anoushka Shankar, and Tom Waits. Despite that collage of wildly varying artistic output, he sounds, broadly, unlike any of them. (Tom Waits gets a mention in many a review, but I don’t hear it, pleasingly.) Active musically again, this is the second of a planned triad of releases, together grouped as Tres Caminos, the earlier release being By No Means, which came out pre-Covid. Again produced by Mitchell Froom (Crowded House, Richard Thompson and many more), it also reprises the guitarwork of David Hidalgo, the legendary Los Lobos frontman.

As the title track starts, the immediate feel is of a pleasing low key guitar based shoogle, with echoes of JJ Cale about the arrangement. His voice is a dusty conversational amble, with simple and direct lyrical imagery. Daylight is one of those one day at a time musings, that actually, “one day at a time,” the chorus. A song around getting over a relationship, it carries a happy go lucky way of dealing with loss, involving “a smoke and a bottle of wine.” With a simply hypnotic groove, if you can later shift the worm from your ear, you’re doing well. Trouble high, Trouble Low continues in a similar lazy lope, neither big nor clever, but entirely convincing. “Alright“s and “o yeah“s are frequent asides to his singing, and you wouldn’t want it any other way.

Walkin’ is more a trip into outlaw country, the sort of song you can imagine a Waylon or a Willie crooning through, and Keller’s voice now tips a nod in Waylon Jennings direction. Electric piano offers that swampy Muscle Shoals sound, all of a wetlands shimmer. There comes now a sudden realisation as to how seemingly hands off is Froom’s production, his MO more generally of quirky traits and trade-offs; here he is content to lay down a crystalline balance that shows off the sound as it, um, sounds. She’s The One is something a bit more funky, with a propulsive slipstream that brings any number of similar songs to mind. Without caring a jot, it’s just so darn catchy. It’s the sort of music only old guys can carry off this convincingly.

A gumbo blues rhythm permeates Pebble In My Shoe, an almost imperceptible bossa nova beat sliding in, Hidalgo slipping out some reflex ripples of his Fender SG, as cool as a cocktail. I Like It Like That, rather than being my comment, is the next song, another recycled ratatouille of retro riffs. If all property is theft, Keller is going to need a big house. More great Hidalgo guitar. Mighty Love is then a flickery frug in the style of Bruce’s Hungry Heart, Keller widening his throat to give his most expressive vocal yet. Ringing the changes, the short I Can’t Stand A Day without You is a West Texas oom-pah-pah, that only needs a mariachi trumpet to inhabit the full conjunto. The shortest song here, a minute and three-quarters, none stray into any three minute overstay of welcome.

Closer to Nowhere, with its careful 1,2,3,4 intro and lashings of echo, is back in swampabilly central. An intensely economical guitar solo, barely three notes, adds all the atmosphere you need. If the musicians aren’t all wearing shades indoors, well, I’ll eat my stetson. If you call a song Oh Yeah, it really ought to sound like this, and it would be so cool if this is actually what the band were playing, in Roxy’s song of that name. I think even Mr Ferry would buy that. A chippy roman noir vibe inhabits Bungalow Road, which tip toes a tale of derring-do through somewhere not too far from the road called Tobacco.

As the final song takes the album over, just over, the half hour mark, proving that sometimes less really is more, it is the reverb-y love song If You Love Me that seals the deal with a casual beauty. Keller’s mellifluous phrasing is perfect for the reveal of a sweeter softer side. Rather than love, if you trust me, search out this record. Sure, you’ve never heard of him, and may never again, but you’ll thank me. Dare you!

Trouble High, Trouble Low:

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