There is no artist I’ve come across in recent years quite like Keeley, her dedication and persistence to her cause is both remarkable and unwavering. When I say her cause, I don’t just mean the creation of her perfect and complex dream-pop/shoegaze masterpieces, it must be said that Keeley is no ordinary recording artist. Her raison d’etre, and what makes her tick, is the pursuit of justice for German backpacker Inga Maria Hauser who was cruelly murdered on a backpacking trip as she made her way to Ireland from Scotland. What makes the dedication to her cause all the more remarkable is that Keeley did not know and had never met Inga Maria.
I have been fortunate to be able to follow the progress of Keeley from the start being wowed by her music, and drawn into the world of Inga Maria through Keeley’s heartfelt recorded works. For those who have not come across Keeley before her sole muse in her song-writing is the tragic teenager whose life was cruelly cut short, all of her recorded works, bar one cover version – Spiritualized’s Shine a Light – are written about the life and travel’s of Inga Maria. I was blessed to have the opportunity to ask a few questions ahead of the release of her extraordinary new album.
GQ:Obviously this is your second full length album inspired by Inga Maria Hauser, as all your music is and as fans of your music will be aware. Her still-unsolved murder is something that has been part of your life since before you started releasing music with your blog. What is it about this particular case, the cruel murder of Inga Maria, that has had such a lasting impact on, not just your music, but you as an individual?
Keeley: That which is pure will always endure.
GQ:I saw you in the documentary Murder in the Badlands, all about Inga Maria’s case. Do you think there will ever be a resolution to this case?
Keeley: I was very optimistic before the PPS (Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland) handed down their judgement in 2020 where they opted not to proceed to court with the case against two of the individuals suspected of involvement in Inga’s murder. Sadly, I’m no longer optimistic. But that said, I’m an eternal optimist, and I’m conscious that one of the characteristics of Inga’s case is that it never dies. No matter how often hopes have been dashed, and no matter how often and for how long the case has been mothballed in inaction over the past 36 years, it has always arisen again with a tantalising new lead or development. So I still can’t completely believe that it’s dead and buried. But the law is an ass, as the saying goes.
GQ:Do you still have contact with Inga Maria’s family? How do they feel about your music, obviously they shared a recording of Inga Maria singing for your last album.
Keeley:I’ve been in touch with Inga’s nephew Viktor for a number of years now, he’s someone I consider a friend. I travelled to Munich to meet with Viktor and his sister and present them with a vinyl copy of Floating Above Everything Else just before it came out in May 2023, we went out for a lovely meal together. I was previously in touch with Inga’s sister Friederike via email. Everyone always assumes Inga has a huge family and that they’re very visible and vocal but it’s really the opposite. There are very, very few family members of Inga still alive, in fact none other than the three I’ve had contact with. Inga’s mum and dad both died without ever learning what actually happened on the night she was killed, and they never lived to see justice done or learn who was responsible, which is incredibly sad.
It is always a pleasure to meet and talk with Keeley, who exudes a genuine warmth and, as well as her dedication to Inga Maria, has a sincere and authentic love of and encyclopaedic knowledge of music. She recently played an awe-inspiring set of songs from her new album Beautiful Mysterious to a sold out crowd in Glasgow’s Slay supporting Terrorvision, only the second time she has played in the city after a superb debut in Glasgow the previous year.
There were several Keeley fans I recognised in the crowd, however, as this show was sold out before Keeley was added to the bill, it was an opportunity for her, and her band Lukey Foxtrot on bass and former Morrissey drummer Andrew Paresi to gain a whole set of new fans, which, judging by the enthusiastic reaction of the early comers, they duly did, and as I caught up with the three of them after the show they were approached by several people expressing their gratitude. Keeley was charming to every person who spoke with her.
GQ: Talk to me about your latest band line up, with Lukey Foxtrot on bass, and Andrew Paresi on drums, I’ve only managed to see you twice now and obviously I loved both gigs, but the second gig seemed to have an increased level of intensity in the sound.
Keeley:Yes, you’re right. Playing more shows this year than ever before, and touring as widely as we have done in the past 12 months, has lent a greater muscularity to the live sound. Also, playing bigger venues and opening for a series of legendary bands has given me and us more self-assurance and confidence, and that’s reflected in how we are onstage now. In addition, having expanded my own personal sonic arsenal with the addition of a new reverb pedal and a new feedback pedal has added yet more colour to our live sound.
Furthermore, playing live as a mere three-piece, with me effectively having to do the work of three people onstage each night, singing, and playing both lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously, has added to a warrior-like mindset.
Terrorvision tour as a seven-piece band and unlike us who are much harder to pigeonhole, they’re an out-and-out hard rock band. The first night of the tour in Wolverhampton, we walked out onstage in front of 1,100 people, which is the biggest crowd that I or we have ever faced, and we played a set of entirely new songs, everything we played that night was off the new album which hadn’t come out yet. What’s more, there were just three of us, on this vast stage – the venue, KK’s Steelmill is honestly as big as an arena – and we were opening for a 7-piece band! And yet we played the best show we’ve ever played, and we sold the most merch that night that we’ve ever sold. So coming through that sort of baptism of fire adds to our growing confidence. It’s the sort of confidence that keyboards warriors and trolls can’t even dream of. Cowards like that simply wouldn’t be able to handle a situation like that. But I know that me and my bandmates can, because we do it every night. So bring it on!
GQ:How does it feel playing the new songs live, in Glasgow they seemed to go down really well, even though it was mainly a Terrorvision crowd. Are you finding when you support these various bands that you are getting more and more people approaching you about your music after the gig?
Keeley:Yes, definitely. We played our best shows yet on that Terrorvision tour, and their fans were so lovely towards us. I love playing the new songs live, although most of them I’ve been playing live for years in the various line-ups of the band in Ireland and the UK, the songs have changed quite a lot over time because almost every time I play a song, I chance upon a new and better way to sing a melody or play a guitar part. That’s the reason why the record was mastered and unmastered an unprecedented three times before it was even released! Because I kept on having to go back into the studio and repeatedly re-record vocals and guitar parts to reflect the fact the songs had these new parts that I’d discovered as a result of playing them in rehearsals or onstage.
GQ:You’ve played with a lot of bands you look up to and have received plaudits from the likes of Miki Berenyi amongst others, obviously your aim would be to be a big household name yourself, and you are getting bigger all the time, but who would be your dream band to share a stage with and why?
Keeley:Buzzcocks, Tears For Fears, Suede, The Charlatans and The Pretenders because they’re five of my favourite bands and they’re all still touring so it’s a fairly realistic possibility. We’re going to be going on the road with a legendary band in early 2025 who I’ve loved for many years but have never opened for before, and we’re extremely excited about it.
GQ:Tell me about your new album Beautiful Mysterious, this is the first time you’ve named Inga Maria specifically in a song title. How would you describe the progression of your music since Floating Above Everything Else?
Keeley:I have to answer that question in two parts – the first in terms of lyrically and conceptually, and the second in terms of sonically. With Floating Above Everything Else, all of the songs were about Inga, and even the one cover on the record, ‘Shine a Light’, was sung with her in mind. But that record was like a collection of 11 short stories. Although I put a lot of time into sequencing that album so that it flowed as well as possible musically, it wasn’t a very linear record lyrically in that although all the songs were linked by being about Inga, they all dealt with different aspects of her story in a way that was quite random.
However, Beautiful Mysterious was very much created as a linear work with a very clear narrative arc. I knew exactly the story I wanted to tell with it, and from the outset it felt like the ultimate statement about Inga and her time on this Earth. It very much flows like a book, which is why I’ve described it as “a sonic novel” and “a film for the ear” in the blurb on the rear cover. It’s the kind of album no one I know is really making, one where there’s a very definite storytelling arc with a beginning, a middle and an end, and one that isn’t autobiographical at all. The album takes the form of two parts, “Part One: The Beauty” and “Part Two: The Mystery”, dealing with the two very contrasting sides of the story. The first sonic chapter, or song, ‘A Doorway To Another World’ begins in 1982 and chronicles the last five years of Inga’s life, from the beginning of her teenage years, and gradually moves through 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 before reaching Spring 1988 which culminated in her fateful decision to undertake her first solo trip abroad, a trip that would change her life and the lives of all those involved in so many ways she could never have anticipated.
As for sonically, from the moment Alan (Maguire, KEELEY producer) and I recorded ‘A Doorway To Another World’ which was always going to be the opening chapter of the record, it felt like a raising of the creative stakes, and even deeper and darker immersion than before. I love sonic atmospheres so much, and I know Alan and my bandmates Lukey and Andrew do too, and there’s so much of a sense of atmosphere in Inga’s story, because the locations where she spent the last week of her life – travelling all the way through Germany and the Netherlands by train, sailing from The Hook of Holland to Harwich, then travelling around London and up through England and even more so the locations where she spent the last day of her life, namely the Scottish highlands, travelling across Scotland, the Irish Sea and into Northern Ireland, are so atmospheric, spacious and scenic. And the atmosphere of that time, 1988, is central to the spirit of the sonic scenery. So, with the sound I’m always trying to capture a sense of the atmosphere of the time and the places where she was, because not only are the songs all about her, but the SOUNDS all have to be about her and her journey as well. All the soundscapes on record are created in a way to emphasise aspects of the story. For example, the dreaminess of the sound of ‘Days in a Daze’ is a reflection of the dreamy day Inga spent in Bath amid sunshine and blue skies, whereas the frantic ferocity of the sounds in ‘Forever Froze’ and ‘Scratches On Your Face’ are like terror-filled tone poems that deal with some of the darkest aspects of the story. That sense of hurtling towards a terrifying oblivion, at the onset of the realisation that something wasn’t right and that growing, gnawing sense of deep unease she must have started feeling soon after leaving Larne, capturing that sonically as we did in ‘Forever Froze’ was quite an achievement. It’s there in the song, and it’s there in the sound, waiting to be found.
The album is an absolute triumph, in Keeley’s words, it is more of a concept album than its predecessor, with the songs forming a chronological timeline tracing the origins of Inga Maria’s tale back to the early 80’s through her journey to the UK, her dreams for her trip, all the way through to her fighting off her attacker and her untimely death. As ever, Keeley treats Inga’s story with compassion and empathy, demonstrating a deep and lasting love and respect for Inga Maria, and comes with the blessing of her family, including using excerpts from her own diary and also featuring a tear inducing clip of her singing.
The album opens with A Doorway to Another World, an atmospheric dream-like shoegaze song which soars into the ether, the lyrics telling a story of the years leading up to 1988, the year of the fateful trip Inga Maria had dreamt about from years. As the song melts away, the gateway into the other world she dreamt of opens up in front of Inga in the form of Trans-Europe 18, the track adding subtle elements of krautrock to the mix, a repetitive electronic rhythm channelling Kraftwerk meets Stereolab layered amongst the pulsating bass and singing guitar lines that give off the feel of the steady cadence of a train speeding it’s way across Europe as Inga’s “heart misses a beat” with her excitement.
In Inga Maria’s Dream, that anticipation and excitement comes to fruition as the dream finally comes to reality, Keeley linking back to previous songs as Inga is “totally entranced” by London, the start to her ill-fated adventure. Her journey is soundtracked once again by hypnotic chiming guitars as the story of Inga’s trip takes her through the country to Inverness and beyond. That hypnotic charm continues unabated and fittingly into Days in a Daze, the gloriously ethereal instrumentation and arrangement is utterly mesmerising and soothing to the soul, creating a spellbinding musical anaesthesia to help you drift away from reality into Inga’s world as she explores the places she passes through.
The driving cadence and sweeping majesty of the bittersweet Last Words is seductively compelling as the lyrics have Inga looking forward to the next leg of her trip as she boards the ferry from Stranraer to Larne, what makes the song even more poignant is the realisation that these aren’t Keeley’s lyrics, but Inga’s very own words taken from her diary. The ferry trip is captured further as the album reaches it’s halfway point in the crashing boisterousness of Galloway Princess, the name of the motor vessel taking on a whole new meaning as you imagine Inga’s excitement as she still feels like the ruler of her own destiny, the whole world laid out in front of her.
That world that was hers to explore was soon to be cruelly taken away from her, as Keeley sympathetically explores what became of Inga when she stepped from the ferry onto Irish soil, in Inga Hauser, the uplifting nature of the song with it’s Johnny Marr-esque riffs still reflects the optimism Inga would have felt as she embarked on the next part of her adventure, before that joy would have turned… “did you even get one happy minute” questions Keeley as the song reaches its climax.
Forever Froze follows and has a smouldering energy to it, a passion ignited somewhere in Keeley’s soul, like she has taken an anger swelling inside of her and built a fond but fiery tribute. There is a certain anger displayed in the intensely fervent riffs in the chorus of Scratches on Your Face, a song directed at the evil perpetrator of the crime who has never been brought to justice, the chorus delivered with a vehement emotion.
The album closes with a double salvo of heartfelt reflective tributes to Inga, Waves of 1988 starts with Keeley listing her various destinations, encapsulating the trip of “a girl in the grip of her great escape” but the tragedy of it’s outcome is remembered with the song abruptly ending on the word Larne… The album closes with the achingly beautiful ballad You Were the Beauty, an alluringly delicate eulogy to a young life taken too soon that would touch the hardest of hearts. If your emotions weren’t already coming to the surface, just wait a few seconds for the kicker that closes out the album. It is fitting for Inga to have the last words on this stunning masterpiece of a record.
GQ:Do you have any favourite songs on the album, what makes them so?
Keeley: I have four! Track 1, ‘A Doorway To Another World’. Track 2, ‘Trans-Europe 18’. Track 4, ‘Days In a Daze’. And track 11, ‘You Were The Beauty’. ‘ ‘A Doorway To Another World’ and ‘Trans-Europe 18’ because they both have a spacey and spacious quality that I love, I find them magical, cosmic and futuristic and yet at the same time anchored quite beautifully in a lost world, the distant past.
‘Days In a Daze’ I love because we captured the personality of that song perfectly, it’s so dream-like and otherworldly, literally beautiful and mysterious. And ‘You Were The Beauty’ is a favourite because it’s so simple and stark, bravely barren and very emotional, probably the most nakedly raw and most moving song I’ve ever written. Every note of it is so delicate, its perfect. And I love that it’s a polar opposite contrast with the closer on the first record, which was so long and epic. The closer on this record couldn’t be more different, this time it’s very stark, fragile and short, less than 3 minutes long. Some artists make a carbon copy of their debut album when they make their second album, whereas nobody could accuse us of doing that. They’re two different worlds. Related worlds but different worlds.
Despite the source material for this album, the tragedy of a young life cut short, there is much joy in this uplifting collection of songs as Keeley seeks to celebrate Inga’s short life, ensuring she will be forever remembered, and kept in the hearts and souls of those who listen to Keeley’s strikingly arresting music.
GQ: You obviously manage to include an element of joy in your songs celebrating her short life and reflecting on Inga Maria’s journey leading up to her tragic death, do you find it hard to perform any of the songs that reflect upon the darker aspects of her story?
Keeley:I don’t, but maybe that’s because with my head having inhabited the landscape of Inga’s case for so long, literally every day for the past 8 and a half years now, I’ve had to face the heart of darkness of Inga’s case so many times.
I’ve been subjected to some vicious online abuse in the past from various keyboard warriors who have nothing better to do than attack someone who they don’t know and they do so to avoid dealing with the emptiness of their lives, but these sort of people will never know what it’s like to be in the places where I’ve found myself psychologically, they haven’t had to pore over horrific details in autopsy reports in the middle of the night and cry uncontrollably the first time they heard her singing. They’re quick to assert their baseless myths and peddle their paranoid conspiracy theories that suit their tedious sectarian agendas, but these morons always disregard the established facts, factual details are an inconvenient irrelevance to them.
It goes with the territory I’ve learnt. Unlike them, I stand alone, and I front up, I have the courage to face being shot at, and it never deters me. I don’t hide behind a computer screen, or hide behind a husband or a wife, or hide behind a flag as a substitute for a personality, or hide behind a clan of an endless procession of faceless family members like they do. My courage trumps their cowardice every time. I have faced darkness head-on so many times in so many ways. It’s like that line in ‘The Sound of Silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel, “Hello darkness, my old friend…” I’m so familiar with darkness in all its forms that I’m comfortable with it.
As always it was a pleasure to hear from Keeley her thoughts and observations about the album and the development of her music from her perspective. Last words from Keeley then about what’s next…
GQ: The album saw the light of day on the 18th of October at which point you only had a couple of gigs left in 2024. What’s next? Can we expect any more headline Scottish gigs into 2025?
Keeley: I wouldn’t expect any more headline gigs from us anywhere. While I love playing live, and consider it an integral part of what I’m about as an artist and what we’re about as a band, and I believe playing live has a transformative impact on the way our studio recordings develop, in recent months I have developed a dislike and disillusionment with playing headline shows. Our last headline show was in Finsbury Park in July and I believe it could be our last. I love playing support slots however, so much so that I envisage us playing only support slots and festivals from now on. That might sound strange – for instance, it’s the polar opposite outlook Morrissey had, he greatly disliked The Smiths playing support slots or festivals and for that reason that band played very few of either. But I feel the opposite way.
There are several reasons for this. When we opened for Echobelly on their UK tour in May, it was a real eye-opener for me. For the first time we were playing large halls to 500-700 cats every night, and me and my bandmates absolutely loved it, I felt so at home in that environment. Gigs at that level are just so much more enjoyable. Crucially, the sound is vastly better in the big halls, the equipment is much better, the sound engineers are much more capable, soundchecks take no time at all and you don’t have to spend the entire show constantly asking for more vocal and more guitar in your monitor (and yet still never getting enough of either!) Better still, in the big halls you’re playing to hundreds of cats every night. And although they’re not our fans when we take to the stage, every time we’ve played a show as a support act, by the end we’ve won the audience over. I relish the challenge of playing for audiences who we have to fight to win over. And there’s always much to learn from shows where we’re the support act.
The tour dates we’ve done supporting Terrorvision, Echobelly, Miki Berenyi Trio, The Darling Buds, Folk Devils, Alain Whyte and other members of Morrissey’s classic solo band have been the best shows we’ve played. I love the sense of “an event” that shows in the big halls are. Also, and this is a little-known fact, my favourite band of all-time, Joy Division, only ever did one national UK tour, but that wasn’t as a headliner, it was as a support act to Buzzcocks. I find the fact that Joy Division played 26 large stately halls around the UK supporting Buzzcocks fascinating. I’m obsessed with that tour, it’s my favourite tour of all-time. Joy Division were a fish out of water on that tour, they alternately bewildered and bewitched Buzzcocks’ audience, and Ian in particular ultimately found the experience in his own words “soul-destroying”, but to my mind that tension between Joy Division being naturally more familiar with, and ultimately far more comfortable with playing one-night stands at small clubs and therefore finding the experience of supporting Buzzcocks in places such as St. George’s Hall in Bradford and Manchester Apollo strange and ill-suited, I find the tension of that riveting (ironically it had been dubbed the “Tension Tour” on account of Buzzcocks touring their third album ‘A Different Kind of Tension’ at the time). Joy Division being the support act and colliding head-on with the more mainstream audience Buzzcocks had gained by that point, and them conjuring up their unique cauldron of sound and performance every night, I think there was ultimately more value to Joy Division doing that than playing to smaller audiences in the clubs that they were accustomed to. Because those audiences on the Buzzcocks tour were experiencing in Joy Division arguably the most extraordinary and most incendiary live band in the world at that time, and the crowd were having to work out for themselves in that moment what to make of it. That’s a fascinating cultural collision. And for Joy Division too, it was an enriching experience even though they may not have appreciated it or seen it that way.
I find it fascinating exploring that dynamic myself with my bandmates, that sense of being a surprise package that the audience might only be vaguely aware of beforehand, and bringing “the shock of the new” to bear, especially given the nostalgia age we live in nowadays where familiarity has become everything and a the creation of something new, strange and unsettlingly unfamiliar is only going to come from a support act daring to go out on a limb.
Although to get back to your original question, I’m always hugely passionate about playing in Scotland partly because I love the place and partly due to it’s centrality to the landscape of Inga’s story. But I don’t envisage us playing any headline shows anywhere in 2025 or in the remainder of 2024. Beyond that, I don’t know. I want us to gig and tour rampantly. One of my ambitions is to become the best support act in the world. I don’t see that as a lack of ambition on my behalf, to my mind it’s the opposite. Also, in the big halls you’re dealing with far more spacious places than we’d be facing if we were doing headline shows, and I find space fascinating. The sense of space in our music is the aspect I’m most excited about exploring. And actually having space to physically stretch out onstage and not be restricted in terms of room to move is another thing I love about the big halls. We played a one-off show in South London recently where I literally didn’t have an inch of space to move forwards, backwards or sideways. As a result of that, I couldn’t physically respond to the music which felt so restrictive. “Space is the place”, as Sun Ra said. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space”, as Spiritualized said…
