Andrew McKeag has been making a racket for a few decades, and he has never been short of work. He has played sessions, teched guitars, managed tours and booked clubs, and these days he holds down the bass spot in Neko Case’s band. But the thing he keeps coming back to is loud, greasy, ’70s-flavoured guitar rock, the sort that rattles windows and gets the neighbours on the phone. He’s been dishing it up in Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver, The Presidents of the United States of America, Hard Roller, Huge Spacebird and Me First & the Gimme Gimmes, and he shows no sign of turning the amps down.
We are therefore very proud to bring you an exclusive first look at his new single ‘Highway Dust’.
Over the years, McKeag has traded riffs with Bo Diddley and Javier Escovedo. His Seattle covers outfit 70 Proof has welcomed Duff McKagan and Mike McCready into its ranks. His self-titled debut with the Andrew McKeag Band featured Zakk Wylde, Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford and Zander Schloss. None of that is a guarantee of great songs, though, and what makes ‘Highway Dust’ worth your attention is how little it leans on pedigree.
The title track and first single from the band’s second album, produced and engineered by Mike Butler (whose CV covers ground as far apart as Phoebe Bridgers, Ray LaMontagne and the kids’ cartoon Batwheels), is a genuine left turn. McKeag’s usual throttle-open roar is still here, but it has been pointed towards the horizon and allowed to blur. Guitars swell and fold over one another in slow waves, the melody drifts rather than charges, and a borrowed Moog thickens everything into a warm, shimmering fog. McKeag admits they probably leaned on the synth harder than they should have. On this evidence, it was the right call.
His stated aim was to jam Aerosmith and My Bloody Valentine into the same space, a nod to his long-held affection for the psychedelic drift of Kevin Shields and Spiritualized. On paper it sounds like an odd marriage. In practice it works, because the swagger keeps the song grounded while the haze lets it lift off. It is a song built for distance, and it sounds like it. McKeag spends his off-tour days working in a motorcycle shop, delivering bikes across the deserts of California, Arizona and Nevada, and those long, solitary hauls are all over the track — the loneliness, the heat shimmer, the sense of a road with no particular end.
This is exactly the sort of record Backseat Mafia loves to champion: a veteran who has been around the block many times over and still finds new corners to turn down. McKeag jokes that he doesn’t know whether he has evolved, only that he’s got better at the one thing he knows how to do. ‘Highway Dust’ suggests he’s selling himself short on both counts. Creativity does not have a use-by date, and this is the sound of a lifer hitting a new peak.
Watch the video for ‘Highway Dust’ below.
‘Highway Dust’ is out tomorrow via the marvellous Cheersquad Records & Tapes on Bandcamp and all streaming services. The album of the same name follows.
Feature Photograph: Andrew Middleton.
