LAUGH IN THE DARK | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Eleven full-lengths, four EPs, three compilations and one live album into the game, Tommy Keeneis in the midst of a creative roll that, in the space of just six years, has yielded four studio albums; five, if you count 2010 career overview Tommy Keene You Hear Me: A Retrospective 1983-2009. The rock savant's new offering, Laugh in the Dark, is the latest in a fruitful partnership with North Carolina's Second Motion Records label, due out September 4, 2015, and comprises ten fresh Keene nuggets meticulously assembled over the course of six months, a period in which his "unobvious covers" record Excitement at Your Feet saw release to unanimous critical acclaim. Laugh in the Dark, while characterized as always by Keene's distinctive flair for melodic guitar-driven rock and brawny power pop, marks a subtle shift in the artist's songwriting modus operandi in that unlike previously, the material is all of recent vintage. As he explains, "There were always songs left over from the last project or ideas that hadn't been fleshed out. What I've done in the past before starting to write for a new record would be to demo a cover or resurrect an old song of mine that I liked but never made the final cut for an album. But all the songs on Laugh in the Dark were started and finished last year from April through October. I started with a completely fresh slate on this one." With the arrival of Laugh in the Dark Tommy Keene offers yet more evidence that he is like an athlete rediscovering his prime. Only in this artist's case, he never left it. Incidentally, the album title comes from a ride at an amusement park on the outskirts of his old stomping ground of Washington D.C. The same park where the cover photo for 1984's Places That Are Gone was shot. "See, I am consistent!" he concludes, smiling at the memory.