KEIRA IS YOU "Last Row Needs Heroes" (2013)

band: Keira is You album: Last Row Needs Heroes year: 2013

genres: atmospheric rock origin: Poland

PLENTY OF MELODIES TO REMEMBER

Remember when all you had to do in order to chase for new good music was standing in front the TV, tune it to MTV, endow yourself with a notebook and be ready to write down bands and artists’ names, titles of songs and albums and even clever music video directors? It’s been a long time since Headbangers Ball was replaced by 16 and Pregnant. Nowadays going hunting in the huge current music scene can be a tough-going job. One has to deeply dig into piles and piles of new indie bands. But this energy-consuming task is worth carrying out when one finds unforgettable albums that can become a part of your life. This time I feel lucky of having found this Poland-based band called Keira is You, hidden like a gem among stones into the handful of blogs and webzines I am used to visit. The actual name of this new-found jewel is “Last Row Needs Heroes”, it is the third output of Keira is You.

Even though the band tags themselves as punk, anarchism is not the kind of feeling dwelling this room as I listen to this album. Rather than encouraging murdering a politician, “Last Row Needs Heroes” leaves you a taste of melancholy brought by utterly beautiful melodies and an atmospheric approach throughout the album. Namely, the sound of Keira is You is closer to post-rock, shoegaze, atmospheric rock and maybe darkwave, with that feature of emotional tread. I bet you have read this same description for an uncountable number of albums before. Nevertheless folks, in this kind of situations what makes a band to stand out or to be highlighted are the means with which they gear up in order to drive the listener through the moods they want to. The instrumentation, the melodies, the passages, the lyrics and, chiefly, the song-writing take a paramount role in Keira is You.

With a cover art that immediately reminds me of My Dying Bride's "Like Gods of the Sun", “Last Row Needs Heroes” is a train of emotions. Since the band kicks off the album with “Frinds with Time” you grasp that this is not a happy day at all. The singer chanting melancholic lines with a slow aching guitar and rising feedback effects announce the beginning of a low-down journey. Henceforth clean guitars will take over the album until its end. Striking is the fact that the melodies of these guitars are sometimes quite simple and slow, yet effective. This kind of minimalism and slowness brings that feeling of depression aimed for many into the slowcore genre in the 90’s. A bunch of guitar passages can however evoke to The Cure. But folks, gloom here is thicker, perhaps closer to This Empty Flow, not only because of the echoed clean guitars and its spine-chilling simplicity but also because of the other means of which Keira is You takes advantage. Here you can find utterly beautiful strings and a grand piano. This special elements ornament the sound of the album building a charming atmosphere of hopelessness. You can be given the chills as the album reaches its emotional climax performed by these strings in the ending moments of “Wait Dale”. Extra percussion can be found as well, those are developed by Magnus Lindberg, the same fellow of mighty Culf of Luna who has actually produced and mixed this album.

There is no easy forgetting song in “Last Row Needs Heroes”. The creativity of the band is shown by making several long tracks (up to 9 minutes) and getting rid of the traditional pop-ish song structure of alternation of versus and chorus. Each song is different, keeping the listener from boring but always wavering in the same emotional scope. You can go from dark songs like the homonymous one, which is left as the last track, to some others with sudden beams of hope, like “Wait Dale”. The latter is a different song, especially on drums, becoming in one of the highlights of the album. Some spooky moments can be found in “Ashtray & The Beat of His Heart” and lyrically in “Dis”, where you can hear “...I’ve been given the cross and crown, I’m leading the procession..”, doomy stuff, eh? However, it is in “O’Brien” where the singer seems to be really inspired, this outstanding track features an unexpected accordion brought by the band’s bass player. Standing by its own is “Monitors”, the first single of the album with quite mysterious bass lines and keyboards. A maddening one-shot video was made for this song.  

Personally, my favorite track is “Chariot of the Sad”. This piece is so melancholic that it dares to open with a beautiful 2-minute long piano introduction. The melody of the song is haunting as hell and, as above mentioned, it is downtempo and simple. Here vocals sound forlorn yet charming while the song is driven by the piano rather than the drums which sound softly in the background.

Undoubtedly you have listened to a song some years after you first enjoyed it and it brings you back to those days. That’s the gorgeous relationship between memories and music. I am wholly sure that after some years have passed I will listen to this album and it will bring me back to these four months I am spending in Gainesville, Florida, a long way from my hometown in Mexico. The powerful songs of this album have something mysterious on them that makes them so haunting. Bands can hook up the listener this way only when they are able to develop well inspired song-writing. Fans of bands like Canaan, The Cure, This Empty Flow, Anathema, The Eden House and even The XX, among many others, have to make sure of giving a listen to this underrated band. 

Bandcamp
Facebook