Hearing is Believing 4 Out Of 5 Stars
Tommy Keene is a power pop prince who so many folks have never heard of. Based out of DC, he spent two heavily hyped albums on the Geffen label, before taking his show to the indies, and this double disc, 41 song retrospective spans a quarter century of ace song-writing, killer vocals and jangling guitars that would make Dwight Twilley proud. While those two records for Geffen (Songs from The Film and Based on Happy Times) are widely considered power pop masterpieces, they only make up a fraction of this set. As per usual with brilliant failures, the Geffen stuff is long out of print and even the later albums are tough to locate without digging. That makes "Tommy Keene You Hear Me" as close to a must have collection as you're going to get from Keene. That even despite the doofy title.
Title or not, there's a power popper's knack for jangle-hooks, a rocker's passion for forceful playing, and the man is an ace guitarist and songwriter. You'll catch hints of The Replacements ("Back to Zero Now"), Cheap Trick ("Nothing Can Change You") and the ever memorable kings of American Power Pop, The Raspberries ("Places That Are Gone"). As eclectic as that is, nothing compares to the man's cover of Lou Reed's "Kill Your Sons," is which he pulls a rocking melody line out of Reed's NYC nihilism. He goes one step further with his own love letter to NYC, the acoustic kicker "Black and White New York." His recorded work has always been of a high level, which means that even his lesser albums always carried some kickers. They're all here.
My sole gripe is that the liner notes could be a bit more oriented towards discography information, but this album is laid out chronologically. That also means that disc one (Which leans heaviest on the original three albums and EP's) would be a five star record on it's own, with participation from the likes of Jules Shear and Peter Buck. "Tommy Keene You Hear Me" is a super strong set all together, and fans of power pop should get in line. As most of Keene's albums are OOP, you never know how long this CD will stay available.
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