KEO Release Debut Album ‘Put A Smile On For Me’
Keo have spent the last year or so making themselves difficult to ignore. 'Put a smile on for me' is the point where all that noise finally has somewhere to land. This is a debut album built on big guitars, bigger feelings and uncomfortable business of looking directly at yourself. It isn't particularly interested in being perfectly polished- and that's exactly why it works.
There is something slightly ridiculous about the fact we're still referring to Keo as 'up and coming'. The four piece have spent time turning sweaty rooms, festivals and support slots into something resembling a movement in the form of a sea of Kangol hats.
'Put a smile on for me' doesn't hide from expectation. Instead, it leans directly into it. From the opening moments of 'Be Happy', Keo establish their formula: huge guitars, restless dynamics and Finn Keogh's voice sitting nicely between vulnerability and complete emotional collapse. There are obvious echoes of the alternative rock that came before them - grunge, post-grunge, shoegaze and the more melodic side of 90's guitar music - but Keo understand that influence only becomes interesting when you make it your own.
And then comes 'That's Me'. The albums most immediate statement is also it's most revealing. What could easily have been another big guitar anthem, becomes something more subtly uncomfortable, with Keogh turning the spotlight inward rather than pointing the finger elsewhere. The songs central confession is deliberately ugly, but the music makes it an irresistible anthem.
That's Keo's trick throughout the album- making difficult emotions sound enormous.
'Bird on the Wire' slows everything down, allowing the record's vulnerability to properly breathe. Where the bigger tracks seem built to be screamed back by hundreds of people, this one feels considerably more exposed- a reminder that Keo aren't simple chasing volume, that there's a genuine emotional core underneath the distortion.
'Pistol' brings the guitars crashing back in, while 'Loser' strips away some of the bravado entirely. By the time 'Thorn' arrives, there's a sense that the album has gradually peeled back the version of Keo we've seen from the stage and exposed something more personal.
The emotional volatility becomes particularly interesting as the album moves into it's latter half. 'Black dress' (possibly my personal favourite), arrives with a darker, more intimate presence, feeling less like an attempt to impress and more like an invitation into the record's more private corners. It sits naturally alongside Keo's themes of vulnerability and emotional fall out,
demonstrating the band can make their intensity work at a more restrained scale too.
That matters because 'Put on a smile for me' isn't really an album about just being young, loud and in a guitar band. It's an album about being young, making mistakes, carrying them around and trying to understand what they say about you. That's where Keo separate themselves from the endless stream of guitar bands currently trying to make themselves heard.
There's no shortage of distortion in British music right now. What is harder to manufacture is sinceriety.
And Keo have pleanty of it.
'Put a smile on for me' doesn't feel like the final stage for Keo. It feels better than that. It feels like the beginning of something huge.
There are moments where the influence of the bands who came before them are impossible to miss, but Keo aren't pretending otherwise. They're taking familiar ingredients, of which they are clearly so passionate about, and putting their own emotional weight behind them.
The result is a debut album that sounds raw without being careless, vulnerable without becoming unrelatable and loud without forgetting that the songs underneath the noise actually matter.
Words by Milly Nicholson
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