Johnny Ray’s Downtown – Perry Keyes (Laughing Outlaw)

On face value  it appears that there’s a battle royal going on for Perry Keyes musical soul and it’s a battle that hopefully ends in a countout and honourable moral victory for all combatants.

Featuring in this hypothetical match to the death are the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Paul Kelly, Willie de Ville, Warren Zevon, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Don Walker and Tom Waits, with well timed outside interference from under-rated challengers like John Kennedy, Steve Wynn, Garland Jeffries and Paul Westerberg.

I’m glad I’m not trying to referee that bout.

The winner of course is the listening who is treated to the work to one of Australia’s finest songwriters albeit not one of our best known. And that latter fact is a crime far worse than many that Keyes describes in these sixteen gritty songs.

Part of Keyes lack of widespread profile is that his songs are very “Sydney” and yet Sydney probably doesn’t have the right attitude to deal with the likes of Keyes on a broad scale. Sydney lives for the quick fix and Keyes songs tend to be the type that seep in through your pores slowly and remain fixed beneath your skin indefinitely. Add to that that Sydney doesn’t respond well to be portrayed less than favourably and for all his obvious resigned affection for his hometown Keyes remains resolutely willing to tell it like it is.

But while it’s easy (and fun) to pick the musical reference points, and they will certainly help pointing the uninitiated in the right direction, in the end the references are almost superfluous as Keyes takes his place in the canon in his own right.

He’s a chilling, sometimes funny and vivid lyricist – he paints pained and honest portraits of those eeking out an existence on the flip side of advantage and doing their best (and worst) to make something out of nothing (and nothing out of something). I’m not sure if we are supposed to be rooting for the underdogs in Queen Of Everyone’s Heart or He Shoots He Scores but even if we are not we are no worse off for having met them.

The songs collectively are reflections of the 80’s and 90’s in Sydney and they are the recollections of a man alone, albeit a man who collects passing acquaintances like a homeless guy collects temporary possessions in a shopping cart. He cant quite be sure if those things are ever gonna be any use to him, but they are better than nothing, right? Pauly Roberts, Bobby O’Halloran and Joe Medcalf will never be household names but they had a role in the human drama of Keyes inner-city Sydney and its denizens. It’s worth remembering their stories.

The drug references abound but not as trophies – they are there not for display but as a legitimate part of the setting of these songs – to have left them out would have been more contrived than to have highlighted them.

The musical references mentioned above are all there an accounted for – the Springsteen is largely circa The River and its somewhat disorienting that the song that best illustrates this is called Lou Reed & Robert Quine (No, I don’t know why it’s called Lou Reed & Robert Quine!).
There’s a wonderful flow to this album. On the most simple level it gets the balance between up-tempo and slower songs just right and it takes you on a musical journey just like “an album” is supposed to, just like the great ones used to. The production by Grant Shanahan is sympathetic without being a homage to the influences and it suits the songs and this artist well.

Johnny Ray’s Downtown will probably be one of the best Australian albums to be released this year. I just hope enough people find out about it. Buy two, and give one away to somebody who will appreciate it.