Get Big, the latest album from songwriter and producer Keen Garrity (Rebekah Burchfield), is seriously amazing. Imaginative, totally unexpected, and impressively original, the album is a stunning work of creativity. Each song is a story, and not a predictable one at that. Dark, featuring dry humor and a great sense of theatrics, it’s a really, really great record.
According to the press release, Garrity has “deep country music roots” and is “making storybook pop-rock.” Although I am not a big fan of country music and feel that pop-rock is a fairly vague umbrella term applicable to a lot of different music, I have to agree that in this case it’s a pretty accurate description. But not in a typical sense.
Garrity’s storytelling skills remind me of folklore; her subject matter is very old-school rock. Think Dio, just contemporary. She may not “ride the tiger,” but she’s got a cast of shady and unsettling characters running rampant and causing mischief in her songs, which touch on grave robbing, patent medicine, spiritual possession, and more.
Though the songs can all stand alone, "there's a common theme: all of these songs are about creating a mythology of the self, about flaring your ego out when you're faced with a situation that makes you feel insignificant.” And yeah, that may sound “fanciful and (somewhat obnoxiously) high-concept, but it's [her] hope that it's also fun, listenable, and relatable."
I think it’s totally fun and listenable, though maybe not fully relatable as my coping method with feeling insignificant is vastly different. For example, take the opening on “Shotgun”; the first song on the 8-track album, makes me think of “Riders on The Storm” by The Doors because of the lyrical content, though the music reminds me of The Who. But a minute in, it’s its own thing.
This level of prowess is totally explainable by the fact that Garrity comes from a very musical family and had “spent the late aughties fronting an indie progressive rock band called Wards of the Mayor,” though this is “ her first recorded album and her first foray into the territory of country music.”
All of the songs on Get Big were written, produced, arranged, and recorded by Garrity, who also commanded the piano, organ, synthesizers, bass, and even the drum programming, with Will Malone assisting on guitars. The record was mixed by Matty Harris. Check out more from the artist on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, and make sure to listen to her work on Spotify and Bandcamp
Track List:
Shotgun
Casting You Out
Walkabout / Stroll On
Broken One
Get Big
Gold Digger
What You Put in It
Statuesque
Note* Album provided for objective review by our partners.
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