Keyside and the Sound of Modern Liverpool

ANOMIE CAUGHT UP WITH DANI-LEE AND BEN, LEAD SINGER AND GUITARIST OF LIVERPOOL BAND KEYSIDE, TO TALK ABOUT TURNING CASUAL JAM SESSIONS INTO A FULL-FLEDGED BAND AND CAPTURING THE REALITIES OF MODERN LIVERPOOL THROUGH THEIR MUSIC. FROM RAW STORYTELLING AND CHEEKY INDIE HOOKS TO SONGS THAT TACKLE ADDICTION, LOSS, AND COMMUNITY, THEIR APPROACH BALANCES HEAVY SUBJECTS WITH MELODIES THAT KEEP PEOPLE MOVING.

IN THIS CHAT, THEY REFLECT ON THE MOMENTS THAT SHAPED THEIR SOUND, VIRAL TIKTOK COVERS FILMED IN FREEZING WEATHER, AND THE WEIGHT OF HEARING CROWDS SING BACK LYRICS THAT MEAN SOMETHING TO THEM.

@KEYSIDELIVERPOOL

ANOMIE: Hi guys! You formed in summer 2022 after a random party encounter, at what point did it turn from “we should jam sometime” into “this is a band”?  

DANI-LEE: Probably when Max (Keyside’s bassist) joined. Ben and I met at a party in 2018, but we didn't really get involved properly until a few years after. Once we met Max, it just kind of worked. It was around 2022 when we first went to the studio. We were like a bonsai tree, you know what I mean? Looks nice, but it takes time. 

ANOMIE: Dani-Lee, you’ve said you tend to start songs alone before sharing them with the rest of the group. When you bring a stripped-back idea to the band, what’s the usual “spark moment” where it becomes a properly formed Keyside track?

DANI-LEE: Yeah, do you know what, that's a good question that. I'd say there's always an indie twang to it. I'd say Keyside songs need to be quite raw in terms of lyrics and story, or it has to have a bit of a cheeky element, like Runaway or Angeline, which have got a raw story but still has that quirky indie side. 

ANOMIE: Quite a lot of your songs have real weight under the melodies. When you're writing about heavier topics, how do you stop it from becoming too bleak or preachy? They’ve all still got that sort of catchy vibe that makes them fun to listen to. 

DANI-LEE: Yeah, if a track has got a dark story, then we try and give it an upbeat melody, I think it's easier to digest that way. If it's got a dark story, and a dark melody as well, it can be a bit too much, you know what I mean? It's a bit heavy. It's like medicine with no banana flavour. 

ANOMIE: Ben, what are you first looking for when Dani-Lee brings a new track in, is it a rhythm, a feeling, or a guitar space you can open up? How does that next stage of making a song come about when you're physically together? 

BEN: Every song's different, isn't it? For Down My Way, that's quite a Scouse song in itself. I always think about it like, when you play guitar you're sort of decorating the melody of the vocals, I’m trying to think about how I can complement them. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about, isn't it? You know, no one cares if you've got the best riff, if the lyrics aren't very good, so it's always about complementing the lyrics. 

ANOMIE: Do comparisons to other bands, such as The Smiths, help you reach people, or do they put you in a bit of a box before they’ve even listened properly? 

DANI-LEE: It's a bit of both, isn't it? 

BEN: Yeah, I get why people do it, people want something to make sense, don't they? 

DANI-LEE: Yeah, I do that at gigs when I see a new band, I just make sense of it by going “it's got a tone a bit like Fontaines D.C.” or something. You tend to do that, but when you get familiar with it, you sort of appreciate it as its own thing. I think it's necessary for people to do that, I don’t feel limited by it.

ANOMIE: Speaking of live gigs, do you feel like your lyrics sometimes change meaning for you once a crowd is singing them back at you?

DANI-LEE: Michael (What’s Your Call?) is definitely one where people properly go for it live. Yeah, I mean, that track has a deep story behind it, but then it manifests into reality when you see people singing it. You know, after the Liverpool show, there was a young lad who came up and said that his brother was called Michael and, unfortunately, had passed away due to suicide. So that was powerful for me, I was taken aback by that. I was like, wow, for him to have that song mean something to him made me feel like, whoa, you know what I mean? That's what it's all about, just connecting in real life. 

ANOMIE: That's really special. Have you had a lot of experiences where you feel like you can connect people or connect with people through your music? 

DANI-LEE: Yeah, definitely. As I say, playing gigs is special because we're actually seeing the people in person. You can see what that song means to them and a lot of people do connect with that track specifically, definitely. 

ANOMIE: Congratulations on your recent headlining tour! Were there any moments during touring that felt like a bit of a turning point, whether that was crowd size or any stand-out moments for you? 

DANI-LEE: When you spend so much time creating content and putting it out on social media, constantly watching the followers, likes, and numbers go up, it’s exciting at first, but you're sort of always chasing the next one. On the last tour we went to Nottingham and we'd never been there before, and we had all these people coming up to us saying “why have you never been before?”. That was boss, we loved it. Speaking to people who were into the band in real life, that makes everything make sense. It's special. 

ANOMIE: Your covers have really taken off on TikTok, what’s the best and worst thing about that kind of attention?

DANI-LEE: It’s cool. People say we should release a cover. That Up The Junction one we've done, I think that's got millions of views. 

BEN: I think if we were going to do any cover and actually release it, it'd probably be that. Or what was the second biggest? She Moves Her Own Way.

DANI-LEE: Oh, yeah. Wasn't that the first one we got over a million on? Yeah, it was, actually. I think the ‘Gavin and Stacey’ episode came out exactly the same time we posted that. 

BEN: Them cover videos are just us freezing because we film them all outside. I don't know how we're able to do them, but we have to film it loads of times because we're dead cold. This time last year, we spent a good few hours out in the freezing cold and snowing everywhere. 

ANOMIE: Dedication. 

BEN: Those videos, mate. I look so dead in the face because it's that cold. I couldn't even feel my fingers changing chords. 

DANI-LEE: I remember we'd filmed some on a VHS or something, like from the 90s, you know? Nostalgic. 

ANOMIE: Did you find that those covers led a lot of people to your original music? 

DAN: Yeah, I think so. I've had a few people come up to me and say they’d seen the covers and thought they were our tunes. People are going “new tune from Keyside!”, and you're just thinking, it's not a new tune, it’s The Kooks.

ANOMIE: Songs like Angeline and Nikita deal with addiction from different angles. When you play them live, what do you hope the room takes away?

DANI-LEE: I hope that if someone in the crowd feels unseen, or has to go home to a place where they can’t really find validation, they can hear the songs and realize they’re not the only one going through it. Maybe they’ll look around and see that a lot of people in the room have been through something similar. There’s something powerful about knowing someone else has felt what you’re feeling. that kind of shared understanding can make things a lot easier to get through. So yeah, I just hope people feel validated. Like they’re not on their own. That’s the main thing, validation.

ANOMIE: Getting that feeling of validation from music can be so important. With that, is there a topic that you want to write about, but haven't quite found the right way to yet?

DANI-LEE: I like to write about all sorts, you know, and obviously there's the usual love stories and things like that. Basically, with all of our music and our upcoming songs, I'm just trying to take a picture of Liverpool in the 21st century, you know? We haven't really touched on subjects such as homelessness and stuff like that, when you go down the road and you actually use your eyes and look about, there's a real homelessness issue in Liverpool. Maybe I need to just observe more, just trying to capture that. 

ANOMIE: Is it important to you to be writing about social issues or topics that you feel strongly about? 

DANI-LEE: It is, yeah. I mean, there's obviously sad things going on, but there's happy things as well, and it's about trying to capture all of that. So there's some songs that are quite happy-go-lucky, like Down My Way. It's all necessary, you know? That's the picture we're trying to paint, really.

ANOMIE: You’ve mentioned early influences like The La’s and The Smiths, and more recent ones like Blossoms, Fontaines D.C., and Wunderhorse. What did you take from the older stuff, and what do the newer bands give you that the classics didn’t? 

DANI-LEE: With the older bands, we picked up on essentially how to be a band, like the fundamentals. Looking at what The La’s did, they've taught us the core foundations of, not how to make music, but how to make music as a band. 

BEN: 100%.

ANOMIE: Has music always been quite important to all of you on an individual level? 

DANI-LEE: Yeah, definitely. It's just been consistent through my whole life. It's just been screaming at me to go and do it. When I put all the pieces together, the only thing I've ever actually been properly interested in consistently throughout my life has been music, it’s the only thing I’ve stuck with. Before this, I was a labourer, and then apprenticeships and offices before that. 

BEN: I was just in uni, been doing this since we finished uni. That's where I met Oisin, our drummer. I was doing engineering in uni, but I hated the course and wanted to go and do music, so I dropped out to take a year to do music instead. 

ANOMIE: As a band, you've supported some really great acts so far. Is there anything you learned by watching them perform that you maybe didn't expect? 

DANI-LEE: Yeah, it’s just a laugh.  Redrum was good to watch. Their set was like, almost perfect from beginning and middle to end. You can see that they've put the hours in. 

BEN: They're a solid live band, Blossoms are great as well. We went on after the band Cast, we were watching how they moved as a band. I've never seen so many jumps. 

ANOMIE: Have you got a stage routine going? A ritual before getting on stage or anything you end up doing afterwards? 

BEN: We just jump like maniacs beforehand. Jump on the spot, I hate waiting to go on stage, man. I just wish I could just get on stage and do it. I hate the wait. You come from the dressing room and you’re sometimes standing waiting to go on stage for 10 minutes, that gap is horrible. I wish we could just go on and not think about it. 

DANI-LEE: People say the scariest part is waiting to go and do it, you know? I wouldn't say it's fear for us, but once you get past the opening intro it’s fine. It's just like excited nerves. 

BEN: It's always just before you go on, the minute you go on and you do your first chord or whatever, it goes instantly. You're just in the zone, you're enjoying it. 

DANI-LEE: I love playing live, man. I just turn into, I don't know, someone else. You know what I mean? I love it. 

ANOMIE: What was it like for you after your recent tour ended, did you experience that post-tour come-down, and if so, how did you handle it?

DANI-LEE: It's horrible now, waiting to get back on the road. You live in a bubble for so many weeks where you just wake up, get in the van, get to the venue, and do your gig. When you don't do it any more you feel a bit lost, you know what I mean? It's a bit mad getting back to normal life. 

BEN: You get the blues, don't you? I remember thinking the other day, I wish I was just in that van again. Although it does get a bit cold... 

ANOMIE: As a band who have got a growing audience, what's the most surprising part of the come up? 

DANI-LEE: People recognising you outside the gigs is a bit mad. Getting asked “aren't you in that band?”, I never expected that. 

DAN: We’re just kind of taking it as it comes. Getting to travel the country with the tunes is boss. 

ANOMIE: Do you feel any pressure with putting music out? Or does it all feel natural? 

DANI-LEE: I hate waiting but you've got to wait. I don’t feel pressure, but it's more like we’re always chasing the next thing. You know, I think we're in a game that moves that quick. I think pressure comes more from within than externally. 

ANOMIE: With your next project, do you want it to be more character-led or something a bit more personal? 

DANI-LEE: Yeah, at the end of the day, we're still a young band, you know what I mean? We’re trying to live life and that. We want to put that in the songs, so maybe expect more tracks like that. We have an ethos of just like a yin-yang thing, we want to talk about what's real, but a lot of kids also just want to escape into music and forget about all that, so we do songs like that as well. It’s a bit of both.

ANOMIE: Is there a specific sort of sound you want for your next project? 

DANI-LEE: A youthful sound, that's it. Fresh. 

ANOMIE: What are you hoping 2026 is going to look like for Keyside? 

BEN: Busy. Just expanding, growing as artists and pushing the message of the songs. More connecting with others and reaching more people. 

ANOMIE: If someone discovers Keyside for the first time in 2026, what do you hope they feel or take away from the music? 

DANI-LEE: Reflect. On the deep songs, I hope they reflect, but on the happy songs, just dance.

CHECK OUT THE NEW SINGLE FROM @KEYSIDELIVERPOOL DROPPING APRIL 22. SIGN UP HERE TO KEEP UP WITH THE BAND.