A mild-mannered Mandarin tutor by day, The Kev was a satirist in China. After writing two albums of Chinese-language songs and going viral, he decided that this wasn’t edgy enough.
He subsequently decided to beat the bland out of the British and Irish music scene. His work is characterised by bottomless cynicism and life-affirming silliness.
Here are some of his most memorable on-stage moments:
The Kev’s songs include the slow, mournful: “Self-Doubt“
The boisterous crowd-pleaser “Cheap Hotel”
The theologically probing “One Question”
and the metaphysical meditation “Hope It Might Be So”
Gigs
Here is a showreel of some of The Kev’s greatest ever onstage moments:
What They Say about The Kev
Guitarist Royston Colaco had this to say: “Kevin’s stuff is super funny. I’ve laughed as hard at it as at any major comedian”.
A review of TMItastic by singer-songwriter Edward Thomas:
Writing comic songs doesn’t strike me as at all easy… writing comic songs that are actually funny and actually songs, even less so. Fortunately, The Kev seems to know exactly what works. Comedy, so it is said, is about subverting expectations (unless you’re Jack Whitehall), and Mr. McGeary has a unique, sadistic gift for stringing you along to that point where comfort or discomfort reaches the point of distraction… then either turning the tables or pulling the rug. He knows just where that line between provocation and repulsion is drawn but, more importantly, he knows how to pace and structure a song dynamically. It turns out that a good comedy routine and a tight pop song have something of a kinship of timing. Popular music is nothing without memorability, and gratifyingly the Kev’s rhetorical skill seems inseparable from his ability to write a catchy hook.
Now, this is all good and chipper and tuneful (and kinda queasy) and genuinely funny… but I suspect that a comedic gesture transcends passing fun into lasting resonance for much the same reason a song would: relatability. The palatable reframing of sadder truths. The prettiness and plaintiveness of songs like ‘When I See a Starry Sky’ and ‘Sometimes’ – the feeling that these are pieces born from tangible frustrations, hopes and disappointments – are what I feel elevates the tight, tart ‘TMItastic’ considerably above the smug post-modern snark that so often constitutes comic song.
Kev on Kev – Clip from an interview with Gerry Fialka
Kevin McGeary 