A master at both keyboards and guitar, as well as at writing songs and singing them, Mike Keneally is capable of just about anything musically and sooner or later he touches on everything musically. But for his first solo album in seven years, Mike Keneally is ‘settling’ on just being Mike Keneally. Which is still far from being meek.
The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat (out February 24, 2023) is his first release since the ambitious concept album Scambot 2 from 2016, though the more recent MFTJ project with drummer Scott Schorr yielded plenty for Keneally-heads to savor in the meantime.
Like the Scambot albums, The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat covers a lot of musical territory, too, but neatly distilled into tidy tracks that don’t venture much past five minutes until the last song. So, as Mike Keneally albums go, it’s pretty accessible. Also as Mike Keneally albums go, it’s pretty adventurous. And with Keneally, both things can be true.
Employing these shorter song formats and veering from power-pop to heavy metal to prog rock to folk-rock with a few music forms tossed in for good measure, Keneally always brings his ample musicianship and hooks-aware composing abilities to bear (the one thing consistent across his 30-plus years of making records). If that sounds to you like You Must Be This Tall, well, you’re not that far off.
The piano and vocals-only “Logos” might not be the way many people might expect a Mike Keneally album to kick off, but his eclecticism has always been at the heart of his style. Maybe more suitable for Broadway than L.A., Keneally’s wit and catchy pop chops can’t help but to show up even here. From there, “Both Sides of the Street” is a lost Badfinger tune, and “Mercury in Second Grade” is similarly graced with a stripped down arrangement (acoustic guitar this time) but his singer-songwriter acumen is easier to appreciate in these exposed settings.
When Keneally decides to rock – which is inevitable – he enlists fellow former Frank Zappa stunt guitarist Steve Vai and the two trade filthy but tasty licks in this instrumental made better with real chord changes and bridges built-in.
Alluding perhaps to his orchestra-backed The Universe Will Provide opus, another instrumental “Ack” likewise sports big band-type arrangements and this through-composed piece swings like hell, then rocks like hell, then swings like hell again, astonishingly ambitious for just three-and-a-half minutes.
Ever the diversely talented musician, Keneally overdubs rich vocal harmonies for “Lana” over hard riffs while leaving behind Brian May licks. “Big Hit Song” does have radio-friendly hooks but less than two minutes into the mid-tempo soft rock number, a jazzy interlude breaks out and then Keneally’s mint guitar solo break ushers the song back to the beginning for its ending.
“The Carousel of Progress” has a Big Star/XTC vibe, and matches these bands for the rugged way it delivers a good melody but also goes off into side alleys that could have formed the basis for solid tunes of their own.
If you can compose, sing, arrange, play guitar and play keyboards and do it all very well, you should be making records. Slowed down a bit by lockdown, Mike Keneally did thankfully resume answering his main calling, and The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat shows no loss of mojo for him.
Get The Thing That Knowledge Can’t Eat from Mike’s online store.
- Devin Gray – ‘Melt All The Guns II’ (2024) - November 5, 2024
- David Cain – ‘Variations’ (2024) - November 1, 2024
- Will Galison, “Every Child Loved” (2024): One Track Mind - October 30, 2024
