Mike Keneally – You Must Be This Tall (2013)
Mike Keneally Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Mike Keneally, beyond his sheer talent, is that he continues to put out such consistently enjoyable music. It’s not just that he makes good music for someone this far into his career — You Must Be This Tall is either his 14th album or 19th album, or maybe the number is higher, depending on how you count his various releases in solo, band, or collaborative incarnations — it’s that they’re all good and all challenge listeners in a good way with every play.
There is a spirit of joy that runs rampant through- out Keneally’s catalog. You won’t necessarily be laughing while listening to his music, but such a gifted musician is he, backed by equally gifted musicians when he needs to be, you will find yourself grinning at what you’re witnessing. It’s an essence of endless exploration without something that shipwrecks so many other talented performers: grandstanding. The pervading feeling of Keneally’s music is that when he settles in to write music, it’s very much with the excited mindset of simply trying to find where one note can lead to that it hasn’t lead to before.
You Must Be This Tall comes out of nowhere after 2012's collaboration with former XTC leader Andy Partridge, Wing Beat Fantastic, where Keneally performed songs he and Partridge wrote together. Their work together has clearly brushed off on Keneally. While he has always had a strong ear for hooks, something has changed with the pairing, and his penchant for happy brain-worm hooks has tightened considerably, as if Partridge was the Yoda to his Luke Skywalker. The result is an album that comes across as a kind of condensed companion to 1999's instrumental Nonkertompf blended with some of the oddball sensibility that came back to the fore in the later Scambot 1, and even a little guitar heroics of Dog mixed in for good measure.
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