Perry Keyes

Perry Keyes writes about Sydney from the inside of it - Redfern terraces, Waterloo housing blocks, the pawn-shop guitar he bought at twelve and the first song he wrote six months later. He formed the Stolen Holdens in 1989, borrowing the attack of The Clash and Elvis Costello and the reportage of Lou Reed, then spent the following decades turning working-class inner-city Sydney into a body of heartland rock detailed enough that critics reached for Springsteen comparisons and Peter Garrett called the songs painfully human. His debut, the double album Meter, arrived in 2005; The Last Ghost Train Home took Radio National's album of the year and a finalist spot in the Australian Music Prize, and Johnny Ray's Downtown earned an ARIA nomination in 2010. Later records widened the map - Sunnyholt west to the outer suburbs, Jim Salmon's Lament into fathers and grief after his own father's death, Black & White Town back to Waterloo with songs he had played live for thirty years before recording them. He remains a songwriter's songwriter: eight albums, considerable acclaim, and a South Sydney Rabbitohs allegiance he has never bothered to hide.