David Keenan
David Keenan (born April 1971) is a Scottish author, critic and musician who has been a regular contributor to The Wire since 1995. He is the author of England's Hidden Reverse, a biography of Coil, Current 93 and Nurse with Wound. He used to run Volcanic Tongue. His novel For the Good Times won the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize.[1]
David Keenan | |
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David Keenan, 2019. Meeting with writers from the UK in All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature. | |
Background information | |
Born | Scotland | 1 April 1971
Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter, author |
Instruments | Guitar, vocals |
Years active | 1990s–present |
Associated acts | 18 Wheeler, Taurpis Tula, Telstar Ponies, Tight Meat Duo, Phantom Engineer |
His work for The Wire has been highly influential, helping to focus the magazine more towards coverage of new experimental rock, noise, folk, industrial and psychedelic music. His most frequently cited article is a cover story that appeared in the August 2003 issue entitled "New Weird America", where Keenan coined the phrase "free folk", later bastardised to include "freak folk" and "wyrd folk" and used to describe everyone from Jack Rose and Charalambides through Devendra Banhart.
In an August 2009 piece for The Wire, Keenan coined "hypnagogic pop" to describe a group of musicians whose work resembled "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory". His article incited a slew of hate mail that derided hypnagogic pop as the "worst genre created by a journalist".[2] Keenan became disenchanted with the movement once it homogenized with the mainstream.[3]
A 2009 quote of Keenan cited by Karl Shaw, reproduced in his article in the Wall Street Journal (Review, 24–25 Sept 2011), on the Beatles: "The Beatles are the absolute curse of modern Indie music...my favorite Beatle is Yoko Ono; without Yoko's influence, I don't think there would be any Beatles music I could listen to."[4]
References
- Flood, Alison (11 October 2019). "David Keenan's Troubles novel For the Good Times wins Gordon Burn prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
- Hinkes-Jones, Llewellyn (15 July 2010). "Downtempo Pop: When Good Music Gets a Bad Name". The Atlantic.
- Friedlader, Emilie (21 August 2019). "Chillwave: a momentary microgenre that ushered in the age of nostalgia". The Guardian.
- Shaw, Karl (2011). 10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse: and 100 More Dreadfully Distasteful Lists. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-0-307-72040-5.