James Keen’s “Crossover” album feels like trying to remember a dream you had on a rainy Tuesday in a year that doesn’t make sense anymore. There’s an unmistakable whiff of solitude baked into every chord, as if each strum of the guitar was a plea to escape four walls that were closing in. Maybe that’s the fallout of lockdown living: we all heard the clock tick in a way we never had before, but Keen listened longer, and turned that vigil into music.
Yes, this is a pandemic album—but not one filled with moody dread or existential doom spirals. Instead, Keen offers up sonic vignettes of hope, like postcards from isolation. You know the feeling of stepping outside after days indoors, blinking at sunlight like you’ve never seen it before? That’s what this album sounds like.
The acoustic foundation smacks of familiarity, but there’s nothing nostalgic here except for the implicit ache of wanting to return to something that—spoiler alert—probably never existed in the first place. Even as he dances between Pop, RnB, and Folk like a kid trying on different hats in a thrift store, Keen keeps his gaze fixed ahead, not backward. This is future-looking songwriting, even if some of it has the syrupy sweetness of a mid-’90s CD collection.
Bands are easier to escape into, you’d think, with their kaleidoscope of harmonies and shared responsibilities. James Keen, however, seems to thrive on his lonesome—playing every instrument as if he’s conducting a conversation with versions of himself that only he can hear. Is it inevitable? Maybe, but that’s the magic trick. His soulfully hypnotic guitar solos drift into the ether, only to return like boomerangs. You didn’t expect to catch them, but here they are, stuck in your brain.
Ultimately, “Crossover” feels like a friend pressing play on a mixtape and carefully watching your face for a reaction. That’s where its power lies—not in perfection, but in connection.
And as for James? He’s probably already working on something new, hiding somewhere in plain sight.
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