Welcome to what is both a reflection and a tour recap of one of my favorite albums, the 2014 release Keep You by Pianos Become the Teeth, produced by the incomparable Will Yip. How does one sum up one of the most influential albums of their young adulthood? How does one reconcile both trying to forget the darker days and revisiting them head-on? By going to the 10-year anniversary tour, of course. Buckle up!

I remember listening to 2014’s Keep You for the first time in January of 2015. I was disappointed when it ended that the rest of their back catalogue didn’t sound like it. I was dipping my toe into the river of post-hardcore and I wasn’t quite ready when Spotify played “songs like” Keep You and all of a sudden Kyle Durfey was yelling at me instead of using the steady, low vocals I had just become accustomed to. To this day I still rarely listen to their harder stuff because it just never resonated with me. 

When the band announced they were coming to Providence in 2015 with Turnover, Take One Car, and The World Is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die, I needed to be there. I employed my uncle, who frequently played the venue in the 90s with his band, to bring me, and it was his birthday gift to me that year. It was also my first date with Jeremiah. I remember my uncle asking me what kind of music they played, and, pretentious 18-year-old that I was, I told him that it was post-hardcore, and he laughed at me and said that wasn’t a real thing. He stayed on the deck of the venue while the show happened, and when we left, he asked if I really liked music with “all that screaming”, and said that wasn’t what he expected from me. I still don’t know if he was impressed or disappointed, but he’s no longer here with us so I can’t ask him.

Fast forward to years of not being able to listen to Keep You all that much because of the way it hits home, and the band announces the 10-year anniversary tour. I see the graphic pop up when my Instagram feed refreshes and I say casually that I want to go but don’t make any true effort to make it happen, because I’m scared of what hearing the album live will dredge up in me. The album is exhausting, and it’s bitter, and it’s held so many memories that I just wasn’t sure if I was up to it. We got tickets anyway, because in this house we face our fears.

Frail Body and Stay Inside opened the show at Brighton Music Hall in Boston (one of my favorite venues), and even though I was excited for Frail Body when I had listened to the album earlier in the week, that didn’t quite translate live. Stay Inside is one of my new favorite bands, and I saw them a few years back and they were great. They’re fresh off an album release for spring’s Ferried Away, and I was so thrilled I was able to hear some of those tracks live. The album is one of my favorite releases of the year, I think that the addition of the trumpet really elevates it. There was a marked lack of energy and engagement in the crowd for Frail Body, but that wasn’t the case for Stay Inside, everyone had a great time with their set.

Pianos came on and launched right into the album. No fanfare, no long drawn out speech to get it going. There was such a palpable sense of grief in the room, and you knew everyone was thinking of someone specific, some life event that changed them. I cried and it was okay, because other people were crying, too. I felt a sense of my fight or flight kicking in; it kind of hit me that we were in this room listening to this music and I couldn’t just hit the skip button when I got to a line that hurt me like I do sometimes. The band played through the album seamlessly, and only stopped once when Kyle said that when Keep You was released he didn’t expect so many people to resonate with it, and that over the years he has come to love the album for what it is and what it has given him and all of us. It was heartfelt, he’s never been a huge talker on stage, and that made it meaningful. The tour is very limited, and I can’t help but feel like that’s intentional. They played a few songs after the album, mostly pre-Keep You to keep older fans happy.

I was talking to Kiel about fall tour plans and I was telling him this long story of me and Keep You that I’ve been telling now, and he said it seemed like this show was going to be meaningful for me. It was. It was cathartic, I left feeling a lot lighter. Despite seeing the band in 2017 and hearing some of these songs dispersed in that set, hearing it front to back was just something else. I feel like this is an album I have a trauma bond with. And years later, it somehow feels softer to me – even softer than it felt to the hardcore bros who hated it on release day. In “Repine”, the song ends with “Your wick won’t burn away”, and that’s a line I’ve clung to for years. I repeat it to myself about the people I’ve lost, the person I’ve been, the person I’m becoming, and I repeat it about this album, because without Keep You, I wouldn’t be who I’ve become in these past ten years.

by Nadia Alves

Nadia Alves has been a music enthusiast since she can remember. Going to shows is her main pastime. The other is being upset when she can’t go to shows. This is her first official venture into writing about music. You can follow her on Twitter.