Keeley and The Endless Question Mark
How many times have you heard a song and wondered: what is this really about? Most of the time people are wildly off the mark, or songs are written to be openly interpreted. Some songs are really about nothing at all, a stream of consciousness flow of lyricism akin to throwing paint at a wall. Occasionally, an artist comes along that’s willing to write to you directly about a subject. Let’s talk about Keeley.
Technically, Keeley are a band. As well as including Marty Canavan on keyboards, Martin Fagan on bass and Pete Duff on drums, it’s former Session Motts vocalist and guitarist Keeley Moss that gives the ensemble its name. Moss is also the songwriter, and due to the nature of the pandemic and the proximity to which the band formed to it, she is the only member who has recorded these songs.
Keeley’s debut performance came at the start of 2020 where the band stepped up their efforts, getting in their only gig prior to Covid-19 becoming a world health catastrophe. Like many bands, they optimistically rehearsed together in the summer of 2020 and eventually played the Time Tunnel livestreaming event in late August.
Through the pandemic, Moss recorded a series of Lockdown Rockdowns, recording covers in her home (a house-wide homage to her musical idols) which are available on the band’s Instagram TV and YouTube channels. Moss worked with producer Alan Maguire to produce the band’s current singles, the first of which came in October 2020, called ‘Last Words’. Most recently, Moss announced the band’s signing to London based indie record label Dimple Discs, a match she couldn’t be happier with.
It goes without saying that Keeley Moss is passionate about music and the music she plays, but it’s fused with another passion, that of telling the story of Inga Maria Hauser. Hauser was a German tourist on a sightseeing trip through Britain whose life would be taken from her before reaching the destination of Moss’ hometown of Dublin, Ireland in April 1988. It’s Keeley’s passion for correcting the falsely published details of Inga’s life and to piece together what really happened in the final days on her trip. Her website, ‘The Keeley Chronicles’, is a detailed account of Moss’ findings, which is updated regularly. It’s Inga Maria Hauser who is the subject of Keeley’s lyrical output across these songs, a true meeting of art and life that’s seldom explored this way.
Beginning with a drum machine and a gently phasing electric guitar, ‘Last Words’ is full of sloping synths and buzzing keyboard layers. Bass guitar pulses, hanging back with drums programmed by Alan Maguire, a simple rhythm section that gives room to the varied guitar work which is composed of several sections with different picking. It’s much more than guitar riffs or acoustic strumming, but at the same time it’s constructed to be played by a band with a single guitarist – certainly in no way over the top.
Moss’ opening lyrics read like a handwritten caption on the back of a photograph - ‘Maida Vale, British Rail, Easter Monday 1988.’ And there you are in a scene immediately set, a traveller’s journey in a foreign country with Keeley’s repeated line ‘I wonder where I’ll stay tonight, need more money’ a telling aspect of Hauser’s tale.
The sound of Last Words takes all the best parts of British music in the 1990’s and grants it a second breath in the New Twenties. Even the self-produced music video showing a car journey in reverse harks back to a simpler time of low budget (but just as effective) music memorabilia.
The B-side to Last Words is a track called ‘Days In A Daze’ and features the entire band in a recording taken from their Time Tunnel live stream. It’s a real raw alternative to the more produced studio offerings, and a taster of what you can expect when the band properly returns to performing live.
Much slower and contemplative than Last Words, Days In A Daze could well have been born out of a jam not unlike the freestylings of The Velvet Underground, but far less noisy and more early 1990’s shoegaze. The whole sound is awash with reverb that yields slight feedback. Marty Canavan’s keyboard work is simple but complimentary to Moss’ clean guitar picking. The rhythm section is non-invasive to the overall sound, with both Martin Fagan and Pete Duff playing to serve the song which itself is more instrumental than it is lyric. ‘Walking around in a daze, 11am, back on the train…’ - Keeley Moss’ vocal arrangement of the lyric is long and drawn out, suiting the shoegaze sound and blending with the rest of the band. Days In A Daze finishes ominously with a heartbeat that speeds up for a moment before ending abruptly.
Keeley’s latest single, ‘The Glitter And The Glue’ is the best the band has released so far. Once again produced by Alan Maguire, this track is infectious and upbeat, but no less devastating lyrically. The lines: ‘what a life, what a mess I’ve gotten into, now I’m stuck in the gutter with The Glitter And The Glue’ open the track and stay with you. Though of course it’s never just about the words, a catchy tune in pop music is always about the melody first and lyrics second. Here, in a sole write from Moss, Keeley succeeds in writing both the memorable melody and great lyrics.
Maguire’s drum programming is stepped up a gear here too, far more involved than before, perfectly emulating the band feel. In general this is more a guitar-orientated track than either of the band’s previous songs. Keeping with the theme of travel, the music video shows the London Underground emptier than I ever thought it could be, a troubling by-product of the pandemic no doubt.
If you were expecting more guitar-based smashes, the B-side, ‘You Never Made It That Far’ runs in the opposite direction. Almost entirely built on programming, there are whirling synths, synchronised bass and drums, piano and guitar that is closer to Days In A Daze than The Glitter And The Glue. It shows how much range this band has.
But the real star of the show is the narrative Moss weaves into this track, musing on the life Inga Maria Hauser never got to live. ‘An empty chair, a vacant space, what they did to you and your beautiful face. The children who never had you as Mum, and everything else you would never become.’ Inga was just eighteen years old when she was murdered.
In an era when cameras weren’t claustrophobically mounted to buildings, cars and people, when we didn’t all keep a tracking device in our pockets, when forensic science wasn’t so advanced, Inga Maria Hauser’s case remains unsolved. But it’s people like Keeley Moss who keep unsolved cases like this in the public consciousness, who might one day help to bring closure to a family like Inga’s.
Continue reading for our extensive Q&A with Keeley Moss. We talk about the singles and their B-sides, Inga’s case and The Keeley Chronicles, producer Alan Maguire and love for music in general. All this and more below!
Keeley: Keeley Moss, Martin Fagan, Marty Canavan and Pete Duff.
1. I love how your latest single sounds both modern and vintage. When did you start writing 'The Glitter And The Glue'?
Thank you. I’m so glad that’s the vibe you get off it, as the words “modern” and “vintage” are very much a reflection of my sonic Siamese twinship/kinship. As a Gemini I tend to always need to be in and amongst utter opposites at all times in order to find my spiritual equilibrium between those polar points. To answer your question, I wrote 'The Glitter and the Glue' very soon after the implosion of my previous band Session Motts in early 2018. The song came together incredibly quickly and for the longest time I had no intention of putting it on the album I’m working on, or ever releasing it as a single. I had no idea what to do with it, I thought it might be one of those tracks a band gives away to a compilation, one that’s not available anywhere else. But I couldn’t find anyone to give it to, so I held onto it myself and it almost ended up being shelved and forgotten about. I had planned to release a different song entirely as the follow-up to 'Last Words', and then I remembered this wild little Post-Punk song I had, and asked Alan my producer to mix it with a view to it being the B-side. Alan turned out a mix that sounded colossal. I suggested a few tweaks to it, it got better still, and suddenly this misfit of a song that I’d written and recorded and almost forgotten about sounded like an inevitable single. So I put it out and BOOM! It hasn’t been off the radio in my native Ireland since, it’s had even more airplay than 'Last Words' which was played every night here for months.
2. The B-side, 'You Never Made It That Far' is so different from the A-side - what made you decide on that musical direction?
Although I’m primarily a guitarist, my first love musically was the Pet Shop Boys. Their album Actually was the first studio record I ever owned, and it’s still one of my Desert Island Discs. So I’ve always had a deep love of Electronic music and this only intensified when I got hugely into New Order, Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk in my teens. Also, one of my biggest supporters at radio is Fiachna O’Braonain of the band The Hothouse Flowers, whose Late Date show on RTE Radio 1, the Irish state broadcaster, played a big role in 'Last Words' becoming a radio hit. Fiachna’s show has a more mellow vibe but 'The Glitter and the Glue' is so explosive and sonically-ferocious that I didn’t want shows like Fiachna’s who had been so supportive of 'Last Words' to miss out on being able to play the follow-up. And I wanted to avoid the risk of being pigeonholed for producing only one kind of sound, as there’s so much sonic scope to my music. So I hatched the plan of releasing two very different songs and pairing them back-to-back, which I felt would be the musical equivalent of a double-headed coin! And being a Gemini, I love contrasts! So these are all the reasons why the second Keeley single consists of a blisteringly fast Post-Punk one and a dreamily slow Electronica one. I also love the idea of a double A-side single but I’d never released one before, so that was another pointer in it's favour.
3. Your music is inspired by your passion to bring the life of Inga Maria Hauser to the modern world. What aspects of her story inspired each of the four songs you've released so far?
Spot-on, that’s the purpose of my life in a nutshell. There are so many things about Inga that I find fascinating, and deeply moving. With 'Last Words' I wanted to tell the story of the last days of her life, and to do so in a way that placed Inga at the very centre of the song, rather than it being from an observational standpoint, I wanted it to sound like she wrote in her diary, which is why I used very direct and quite simple language and nothing flowery or poetic. Since I started my work on her campaign five years ago, one of my primary aims has been to learn as much about Inga as possible in order to give her a voice and do so as authentically as possible, out of the deep love and humanity I feel for this person who had her entire adult life stolen from her and who had been effectively rendered 'Silent All These Years' to quote the song by Tori Amos.
With 'Days in a Daze', I was trying to get to the absolute essence of how I imagine Inga felt during those days as she was doing and experiencing very specific things that I've come to learn, and one specific thing in particular. 'Last Words' has more of a cold voice, being very much concerned with Inga’s movements in terms of travelling from London right up until the point she was onboard the Galloway Princess ferry on that fateful night but 'Days in a Daze' is imbued with much more warmth, being basically a love song from the standpoint of a young woman who was absolutely in love with life at that time. Having pored over various diary extracts and postcards that Inga wrote during those days in early April 1988, this is something I know as a fact, not merely speculation.
'The Glitter and the Glue' meanwhile is unique in my songwriting canon for being a song that’s as much about myself as it is about Inga, although when I say it’s about myself, it’s written about experiences I've had in relation to Inga’s case, about finding myself in the eye of the hurricane at various points. Since publishing the first instalment of The Keeley Chronicles back in 2016 it has gone viral several times, which can be amazing and uplifting in terms of generating coverage for a case that’s now 33 years old, but it can also be absolutely overwhelming and at times, very intense and stressful. In particular, around the time of the BBC Spotlight documentary of May 2018 which coincided with the arrest of two of the chief suspects who were held and questioned on suspicion of Inga's murder, the blog was receiving 10,000 hits a day, and I was receiving hundreds of emails at a time. I run the Chronicles entirely on my own, and I’m very conscientious, I believe that anyone who would post a comment or a question on the blog or who would take the time to email me deserves a reply. So you can imagine how many weeks at a time it would take to respond to a deluge like that, and the sort of people – the good, the bad and the ugly – who come out of the woodwork at times like that particularly in the 'Wild West' of the online world. These are all things I never anticipated when I commenced work on the Chronicles. I initially expected about three people to read it. 95,000 hits (so far) in 110 separate countries later, I’m still getting my head around how widely it has circulated around the world, and the intensity of the focus where Inga's case is concerned. Involvement in Inga's case is not for the fainthearted, as I've come to learn over the five years and counting that I've been immersed in it.
The fourth of the four songs I've released to date, 'You Never Made It That Far', was written from the perspective of the world Inga left behind, and how her loss affected those closest to her, particularly her mum and dad and sister. There are so many things to consider where Inga's case is concerned, and where Inga as a person is concerned. Inga's killers disrupted and destroyed an entire cycle of life, where not only was she killed but the potential lives of any children she may have gone on to have was eradicated. One of the lines in this song is, “The children who never had you as Mum...and everything else you would never become”. I think it's one of my favourite lyrics I've written. It's very simple language in a way, but I felt it needed to be, because I wanted to describe the reality of the full impact of the consequences of Inga's killing in terms of her killers, where I'm saying, THIS is what you did, and how the fuck can you not realise the enormity of it, how can you just go on whistling your way through life, how have you been able to do that since 1988 and lay your head on a pillow and sleep every night? It's not some abstract thing, and it's so much more than the killing of a backpacker (or a hitch-hiker as the press have erroneously termed Inga numerous times over the years). I mean, obviously she was a backpacker, but I feel whenever people use those sort of terms without mentioning the other things she was they're doing Inga a disservice because she was so much more than that.
4. The video for 'The Glitter And The Glue' is shot on the London Underground. How did it feel wandering around a place that's usually so bustling?
It felt very weird! It honestly felt ghostly, which I think comes across very strongly in the video. That trip to London where I shot the video was the first time I'd been anywhere outside my flat in six months. I was granted special dispensation to travel to the UK during the height of the pandemic, and me being me I couldn't just hop on a plane, instead I was intent on travelling by ferry and train as I have a thing about ferries and a thing about trains for that matter, partly due to Inga who like me loved to travel by train. But because it takes a lot longer to get from Dublin to London that way, by the time I arrived at Euston and Earls Court it was 1am. It was a Thursday night, and usually those areas and those tube stations are crawling with people at all hours, especially on a night so close to the weekend. So I was amazed to find not one person anywhere in either station. Not one! I mean, Euston is literally the busiest station in London, and London is renowned for being the global metropolis of the world, with 12 million people living there or however many it is, plus all the visitors. So to find not a single soul there was supremely eerie. And what added to the eeriness was the fact that Euston and Earls Court are the only two places in London where there's documented evidence that Inga was there, although I'm sure she visited other places too. It just struck me as so weirdly eerie to find myself in the only two places in London where I know her to have been, and for there to be not one person in either station while I was filming this video for a song about her...very strange. It definitely imbued the video with a spookiness and a profound sense of absence, a creeping uneasiness.
5. You've worked on both of your singles with Alan Maguire. How did you meet Alan? What's he like to work with in the studio?
I'm so glad you've asked me that, as Alan being a studio boffin doesn't get nearly as much focus as me but he is a huge part of this project, and without him these records would probably only exist in my imagination. How we met was, I'd placed several ads online during an incredibly bleak time in my life, in the aftermath of a very dark event that had befallen me. I was striving to emerge from a whirlpool of woe I'd been sucked into, and my placing that ad online on a 'Musicians Contact' page was a desperate last gasp from a waylaid woman. I was actually trying to get a band together at the time, which is something I managed to do eventually, but the first person to contact me was someone who was both a producer and a musician, and that was Alan. We met during a rainstorm in Rathmines, a meeting a long way from where I live and one that I had no idea just how seismic it was going to turn out to be. During the meeting I pitched the concept of my dream to Alan, I explained who I was, what I'd done previously, and what I wanted to do, and he just got it. He ran with it, instinctively as it turned out, and his faith and nous in being willing to support me and facilitate the project coming to life was absolutely crucial. As for what he's like to work with in the studio, he's great. One of the easiest people to work with I've ever met, and I've worked with a lot of different producers over the years. He's technically so adept, he's a brilliant interpreter of my ideas and also has terrific ideas himself. He has no ego, and his judgement is impeccable. He's been so generous, and so fair-minded in all the time we've worked together. He's a natural musician, and although we're very different as people, we have a lot in common musically, being both huge fans of Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Dreampop music. In the studio there's only ever the two of us, we dovetail perfectly. Alan's very technically-minded, which I'm not, and I'm very communicative and bubbly, which he's not, so it's a real yin-yang situation. One of my favourite things about him is that he has no baggage, or if he does it's never evident, it's so easy to work together because we both are solely consumed with creating sonic art and making it the best it can be, there's never any external bullshit that gets in the way of working, which as I've learned in the past is not the case with all producers (laughs).
6. You released 'Last Words' on the anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A' and Oasis album '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' What do those albums mean to you?
That's fantastic you've picked up on that fact! I wish to God other journalists were as mindful of the minutiae of rock history as you are! I relish this question because those two albums were and are absolutely huge for me. They're probably about as different from one another as two albums can be, being informed by completely contrasting sensibilities and having been created at utterly different points in the arcs of those two bands' careers. It was quite deliberate that I released 'Last Words' on the 25th anniversary of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and the 20th anniversary of Kid A because they're two touchstone albums for me, albeit for totally different reasons. Kid A is so dense and foreboding, eerie and intense, true 'head music' (literally, ha!) although it has a very emotional essence, however much Thom Yorke is on record as having felt embarrassed by emotions around the time Radiohead were working on what became Kid A and Amnesiac and as a result feeling the need to disguise, distort and process his singing voice as much as possible, and to create lyrics that subscribe to the cut-up method, being very scattershot and vague, as opposed to being from the heart, although in a way because that's where his heart was at that time, you could say they were much more from the heart than if he'd written lyrics that were very patently emotional. It's funny and ironic just how feted that record has come to be, because I remember the reactions when it was released, and people were outraged, the press most of all! People hated it, and I mean viscerally hated it. Not everyone obviously, but even the people who professed to like it seemed to struggle greatly to love it or regard it as anything other than a botched experiment at best, or a prime example of an artist trolling their fanbase and record label. I'd read so much advance negativity about Kid A in advance of hearing it that I approached it with a little trepidation, but I remember hearing the opening strains of 'Everything In It's Right Place' on a listening deck in HMV in Dublin and being dazzled by it. I even liked 'Treefingers' which everyone else seemed to either dislike or regard as a total waste of space. But I thought it sounded ghostly and incredibly atmospheric. When I listened to the whole record it struck me as the perfect nocturnal soundtrack. It's a record I never listen to during the day, only at night. Which is the case with quite a number of my favourite albums, such as Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Lou Reed's Berlin, Iggy Pop's The Idiot and Siouxsie and the Banshees' The Scream. Kid A has a similar dimension of darkness as those records, only making sense at night – but what sense! It was such a brave record to release at that time especially, and it points to an unassailable truth – that the artist has a duty to lead at all times, regardless of however uncomfortable the places are that their pursuits may lead to. Radiohead, Thom Yorke in particular, because it was his determination that the band avoid making any sort of identifiably 'rock' record and also his insistence that they embrace entirely unfamiliar and radical ways of working is what made the record what it was, and is, led from the front and broke ranks with that record more than any other, and both Yorke and Radiohead copped an enormous amount of flak for it at the time. But he's been proved resoundingly correct in following his artistic instincts, as have his bandmates for supporting his vision, and backing his judgement, all the more so given how unsound and unwise that judgement was deemed at the time of Kid A's creation and release into a bewildered marketplace back in 2000.
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? meanwhile is I think a superb collection of songs, with a sky-scraping confidence and sense of ambition about it. The heady sense of adventure and chemically-enhanced swagger evident from that record is the polar opposite of the anxiety-laden and torturously-tense mindset Radiohead notoriously found themselves plagued with during the making of Kid A. I can't imagine there are many people who love those two albums equally, or many people who love those two albums simultaneously to any degree really but I am that one lone swordsman, and proud of the fact! I love the sound of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, the guitar sounds on 'Roll With It', 'Hey Now!' and 'Champagne Supernova' in particular. I think Liam Gallagher is one of the truly great rock vocalists, and undoubtedly one of the truly landmark rock characters too for that matter, and vocally he was on fire during that time. Noel Gallagher's self-confidence as a songwriter was peaking, and although Noel has been critical of aspects of the production over the years, and more than any other album it's been blamed for the escalation of the 'Loudness Wars' which is fair comment, I love the production on it. There's a lot of diversity on that record, which might sound like a strange thing to say for a band routinely tagged as having been very route-one and lacking in sonic finesse. But those people haven't listened to that record closely enough, if at all. The squalling wah-wah guitars and distortion-drenched backing vocals all over the thrillingly cocksure opener 'Hello' sound like nothing else on the record, and nothing else Oasis did before or thereafter. 'Wonderwall' has become such a universal radio staple that it's easy to overlook how striking it sounded at the time. Cellos on an Oasis record?! It's such a change of pace, and of taste, from the balls-out Rock n' Roll that was their stock-in-trade up to that point. Definitely Maybe, great as it was, was very much a swaggering guitar record with the amps turned up to 11 from start to finish (or at least from the start until 'Married With Children'). Whereas this felt like a genuine attempt to stretch out and widen their musical palette, from the first Noel lead vocal on an Oasis album track and the pianos and string section deployed on 'Don't Look Back in Anger' to the phased-FX on 'Some Might Say' to the Alt. Country high-lonesome stylings of Cast No Shadow to the harmony-laden Beatles-esque pop-fest of 'She's Electric' to the feedback-fried ferocity of 'Morning Glory' and it's wailing wall of sound. I do think they missed a trick by not including the brilliant 'Acquiesce', recorded during the same session as 'Some Might Say' but farcically released as a non-album B-side. And the two untitled snippets from 'The Swamp Song' that mess up the track sequence and take the place of actual songs melts my head (laughs). But you can't have everything. Except with that album, Oasis had everything, sold everything, won everything, snorted everything, screwed everyone, lived life at an insane intensity and remarkably, and fortuitously, have all lived to tell the tale.
7. The video for 'Last Words' is a car journey in reverse, what was ultimately your destination on that trip?
Great question, one that no one's ever asked me before. The answer is - Larne. The video was filmed driving from Dublin to Larne, which is the direct opposite journey Inga planned to undertake. On the night Inga arrived in Northern Ireland, and contrary to popular belief, she had no intention of travelling North, she wanted to travel South, from Larne through Belfast and on to Dublin which is where she needed to go in order to get the ferry to Wales for the culmination of her trip and the meeting with her schoolfriend which was the whole point of it. Inga's primary killer however, had other ideas, and drove her as far north as possible, which explains how she bizarrely ended up many miles in the complete opposite direction from where she had intended going on the fateful night in question. Because Inga having been taken in the opposite direction was such a poignant and significant facet of her story, I wanted to symbolically reference that in the video to 'Last Words' by making a journey in the opposite direction away from Inga's intended destination of Dublin, and all the way to Larne which was Inga's starting point when she arrived in Northern Ireland.
8. 'Days In A Daze' is a live track from the Time Tunnel live stream, what led to releasing this track specifically? Were there others in the running as the B-side?
God I love your questions! They're so insightful and detailed, and every detail is factually accurate which is an outright rarity where my dealing with the media is concerned believe you me. There were no other songs ever in the running as a B-side. The reason I went with that song is two-pronged. One, I wanted to have the band featured on the single if at all possible because they didn't get to play on the A-side and haven't gotten to play on the subsequent singles or on any of the forthcoming album. We'd filmed a set for Time Tunnel which was streamed live, and 'Days in a Daze' is actually my favourite song that I've written and my favourite song to play live. But the second main reason it was chosen for the B-side is that I wrote it about a specific experience Inga had during the last days of her life, and because the A-side also focuses on the last days of Inga's life, it struck me that those two songs would be ideally compatible.
9. The live Keeley line-up includes Marty Canavan, Martin Fagan and Pete Duff. How did you get in contact with those guys and put the band together?
Marty I knew from a previous band we'd been in together. I found him such a breath of fresh air to be around, an all-round terrific musician with a great attitude. Marty and I were out at a gig one night in The Underground (where ironically we would later make our live debut as Keeley) and over the din of the band who were on, he mentioned that he'd bought his first keyboard and would be up for playing with me in this new band I was putting together. At that point I'd met Martin, our bass player, and been rehearsing with him for a short while, after I'd placed another ad online seeking collaborators. From the moment I met M (I call Martin 'M' after the song by The Cure, as we're both huge Cure fans, and also to differentiate himself from our other Martin, who coincidentally was also a bass player prior to joining Keeley. Two guys called Martin in the same band, and they both play bass! Hence one being called M and other taking on the role of keyboard player. It sounds eccentric but it's worked perfectly, well perfectly apart from us never being able to do anything because of the pandemic (laughs). So at that point it was myself, Marty and M and I was offered a gig for us immediately, with the only problem being that the gig was in three weeks time and we had no drummer! But like magic, out of the blue I got an email the next day from a guy in response to the same ad that I'd met M via, and that was Pete, who just happened to be a drummer. If he'd been a tuba player, we might have been in trouble (laughs).
10. Your musical den has had much of a showcase on your social media and is certainly the envy of me! What's your favourite part about that space?
Oh thank you very much. The Keeley HQ is my pride and joy, it took ten years would you believe, to painstakingly piece together the forty separate murals that this homely haven consists of. Although it sounds like a huge place, it's actually pretty tiny! It's basically two rooms and a loo. But to me it's perfect, it's better than Buck House. I think so anyway. Although I'm sure The Queen wouldn't think it was much cop (laughs). My favourite part is the main room, and my favourite mural from an aesthetic point of view is probably The Smiths one, which took me 72 hours to create. It's perfectly symmetrical, and features a copy or an image of every Smiths record ever released, every album, single and import, no matter how obscure or rare. I spend so much time at home and I'm always alone, so the fact that every inch of every wall is 'dressed' in such a way is akin to living in a museum. A music museum. There's only one non-music mural, and that's an Inga Maria Hauser one. Although given that she was a musician, and all my songs are about her, even that one non-music mural is music-related as well.
11. If you could've met Inga Maria Hauser (with no knowledge of her future), what would you have talked about?
What a brilliant question. I'm not just saying it, I've been interviewed countless times in my life, on radio, in the press and on TV, and this is the best and most insightful series of questions I've ever been asked. But that is a truly riveting and thought-provoking question. One of the reasons I love it so much, is that one of the things I'm most obsessed with, concerns what would Inga think. What would she think? I'm fascinated to know what she would make of The Keeley Chronicles. I'm so intrigued as to what she'd think about the album of songs I've written about, and for, her. I'm deeply interested in her thoughts on everything. What would she think of the way her case has never gone away, despite more than three decades having elapsed since 1988, and so many cold periods in the investigation? What would be her thoughts now on her killers and those who willingly assisted in the reprehensible cover-up that was orchestrated on the night she was killed? What would she think about how their lives have turned out? What would she think of her own standing now, of the way her memory has endured so beautifully and so movingly despite her absence all these years. She's had more of an impact on me than anyone I've ever known – and that's without even having gotten to meet her! I think that's extraordinary. And I think it's a testament to Inga really, that her personality was – is – so vibrant, so vital and so vivid, that despite the fact that no one on the island of Ireland outside of her killers ever got to meet her, and despite the fact she was wiped off the face of the Earth 33 years ago, she manages to emit an everlasting afterglow. I mean, we're talking about someone who was alive on the island of Ireland for roughly an hour, at most, and yet here we are talking about her 33 years on. How many people are capable of that sort of permanence? But it's a constant source of annoyance to me that it's impossible to know what she would think of something, anything, everything. They're all permanently unanswerable questions, which is I suspect part of what keeps rendering me so drawn to the flame. I can never know what she would think of anything. So that sense of wonder never dissipates, just as the air of mystery – and air of misery – around Inga and several key aspects of what the fuck actually happened that night, hangs in the air, a terrifyingly-dark and endlessly-testing question mark.
12. What does the future hold for Keeley? Is there more music to come in 2021?
There most certainly is. I've just agreed a deal to join the roster of the London-based label Dimple Discs, home to The Undertones and Cathal Coughlan formerly of Microdisney and the Fatima Mansions. I love The Undertones, and Cathal is one of my absolute favourite artists ever, categorically my favourite lyricist. In so many ways my signing to Dimple Discs is a natural fit, and I've felt a real affinity with the people at the label since they first made contact. It's a label and a creative haven fundamentally steeped in Indie values, which is what I'm all about and what Keeley the band is all about.
2021 is set to see the release of the debut Keeley EP, which will be my first physical release under my own name, and my first-ever vinyl release. There will also be the release of a video that I've produced for 'You Never Made It That Far', which I plan to release to coincide with the next Bandcamp Friday on May 7th. And there may well be the release of an interim single as well, possibly in the summertime. All this, plus more instalments of The Keeley Chronicles whenever I can find the time to write more, plus there's a podcast in the works. And I recently wrapped up filming for a new documentary on Inga's case, which is set to be the most extensive – and most explosive – visual document in the history of the case. It's scheduled to be broadcast on BBC1 in January 2022. And in addition there is the prospect of our very long-awaited return to the stage, with hopefully the resumption of live music in Ireland towards the end of 2021 to look forward to. So altogether, a lot of irons in the fire, with pure shores and clear skies finally on the horizon.
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Download the music of Keeley on their Bandcamp here.
Support Keeley on their Patreon.
For more information on the life of Inga Maria Hauser, follow The Keeley Chronicles.
Follow Keeley on Instagram and Facebook @keeleymusic, and on Twitter @keeleysound.
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