Even by rock'n'roll's reality-avoiding standards, KEALER fontman Jason Kelly's story makes particularly hair-raising reading. It's far too long to go into here, but suffice to say it includes sex, drugs, "Full Monty"-style stripping and, er, narrowly avoiding becoming an Olympic swimmer as well as a fair modicum of rock'n'roll. Well, at least over the past couple of years, since Jason's knocked the drugs on the head and worked up some gritty, true life confessionals.
"Missing For Days" is a taster for his soon-come debut album and, while it's not startlingly original, it's performed with enough fire, bitten-off passion and wryly-observed honesty to ensure you soon warm to him. A janglesome opening gives way to a rush of proud rock chords which fit Kelly's gruff, north Manc vocals like a spiky leather glove and his tough, experience-stained narrative phlegms out all sorts of hard-won wisdom like "We could go missing for days, go misbehavin', end up in Strangeways", while the painfully self-deprecating chorus line: "We're gonna do things the one way, wrong way" shows off some particularly brutal personal scars.
Kealer (the band) make further space for themselves on second track, "Cash Money." As I write I'm not entirely sure of the personnel, but I believe they include ex-Lightning Seeds and Richard Ashcroft band members and they lay down a filthy, punky blues for Kelly to splatter all manner of disreputable truths upon here. It begins with a hard, twangy bassline and Kelly muttering "got any change...got any spare change?" before ripping into images of low-life and reality biting deep and sounds desperate enough to work. Down and out in Oldham and Soho, you could say.
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Finally there's "Wheel": a slow, acoustic number, with just shaker and tambourine to offset the finger picking and Kelly's starker-than-stark subject matter. Recalling Elbow's Guy Garvey, he relates the numb chorus of "On a wheel, going round, comin' down..." before pointing the finger at himself as "mr.dependency."
"Missing For Days" is this writer's first rough and tumble with Kealer. They're not an easy band to settle in with, but their tell-it-like-it-is stance pulls no punches and in Jason Kelly they have a frontman with no intention of watering things down. With an album due any time, let's hope he's pulled back from doing a full-scale Pete Doherty for good.
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