tommy keene

he effervescent enthusiasm that pervades Tommy Keene’s new album, Behind the Parade, belies the artist’s nearly thirty-year career as a cult figure. Sample the previous high points of his discography– Places that Are Gone or Based on Happy Times– and listen for a discernible difference in energy.

Tommy Keene is one of America's two great practitioners of power pop along with Matthew Sweet. Yet while the latter, as befits his name, anticipates the best is yet to come, there's an ironic contrast with Keene’s moniker: his tunes carry an ever so slight but nevertheless palpable air of melancholy.