Keen Garrity is a new alt-country solo project from a Knoxville, Tennessee native, Rebekah Burchfield, and her debut album Get Big was just released earlier this year. She was previously a member of a prog rock band named Wards of the Mayor, but although country may be new for her personally as a musician, the Burchfield family has found success on the local country circuit throughout the decades. Thus it can be said that country is in her veins, and Get Big has a concepts of sorts; as it forms a storybook where each song represents a tale about a different character.
Finding influence in Neko Case, St. Vincent, and Bonnie Prince Billy, the album turns out to be as much experimental pop as it is country, and although some songs like the title track “Get Big” are purer examples of Americana, many more songs like “Shotgun” and “Walkabout Stroll On” are more electronic with only suggestive touches of country. In fact, the influence of country is found more often in the structure of the songs themselves, and the artist’s love of narrative which is a hallmark of the tradition. In fact, by the end of Get Big, with the rollicking closer “Statuesque,” the album is a truer descendent of Americana than the majority of slickly-produced odes to beer and women that masquerade under the title today.
