What you give is what you get, and May Payne gives herself totally on Keeper. Nothing is spared, not the pain, not the heartache or the self-doubt. She is an open book and reading every page it is impossible to put down. She reveals everything, joy, sorrow, guilt and every now and then there’s a dose of humour and happiness. Nothing is out of bounds, a rare gift for someone who has yet to release her first long player. Although at 28 minutes there was a time when this EP would have qualified as a full album.
Unburdened by modern recording techniques like click tracks, MIDI or loops, Payne and her live band, Sean Rogan and Rhys Jiang, recorded the entire collection in a secluded Welsh cottage. Recording live in the room, they captured the raw energy and touching openness residing within these tracks. Payne herself admits, “You can really feel the seclusion, vulnerability and humanness.”
The utter humanity at the heart of these tracks is unmistakable. ‘Keeper’, the opening track, begins like a drum-led dirge, yet along the way it changes shape and form, swaying like a young tree in the breeze. The staid drumbeat remains throughout as guitars and keyboards burnish the melancholy, keeping things from becoming too self-reverential. “It’s about knowing that I’ve found the love I’d been looking for, but feeling completely unable to accept it,” Payne reveals.
There’s a sturdiness to the instrumentation of ‘Solid Ground’. The electric guitar rings out, instead of sounding fragile Payne appears more sure of herself, even though doubts remain. “I don’t say it, but I know it/ To you only am I bound/ Just to know you feels like placing/ Tender feet on solid ground.” Yet even in that moment doubt remains, ” I’m so scared of what you’ll make me/ But I’ll talk myself around/ You are warm rain, I am evil / I was born to let you down.” Essentially, we get a portrait of a woman unable to decide who she is or is not.
Distance doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder. ‘Pennsylvania’ illuminates how thousands of miles and an ocean provide the distance to facilitate a breakup. Even in that moment there’s a sense she isn’t completely certain. “I’m just killing time, I guess I know I have to leave/ But I know you never tried to get it wrong/ I’m no good at quitting and I love to press repeat/ So keep spinning and I’ll try to sing along.” In those moments while the guitars thrash, there is a certainty the gentleness will return.
Over almost eight minutes ‘Martha, I’m Sorry’, reveals a relationship dissolving before our eyes. From notes of gentle guitar come strains of banjo, electric guitar, along with a litany of little arrows shattering the stillness and delivering the uncomfortable truths. That never more true than in the song’s final worlds, as Payne recounts, ” To lose all the things I’ve come to know so well/ Your bedroom/ Our sweet two/ Your family and your friends.” In that moment, the end and finality is all too real.
Living in a world that can be unbearably painful, Keeper reminds us about the reality of love. It isn’t always simple. Amidst the complexity, May Payne offers an invitation to the emotional core of her world.