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Zack Keim can find inspiration nearly anywhere. The Pittsburgh singer-songwriter hatched the hook for his 2022 single “Canyon” while driving around Washington, D.C. making food deliveries. “I was delivering Uber Eats, and I wrote that on my phone—just a voice memo,” Keim recalls. An insistent vocal refrain (“Can-yonnn!”) was all it took; Keim started strumming the melody on his guitar, and pretty soon the song blossomed into a buoyant folk-pop gem of a tune. 

A few years later, “Canyon” is the galvanizing opener of Keim’s second album, Battery Lane, a substantial leap forward from his 2017 debut First Step. Steeped in yearning melodies, deceptively intricate arrangements, and songs that reckon with youthful heartbreak and self-discovery, Battery Lane establishes Keim as a preternaturally gifted songwriter whose work bridges the gap between garage-rock scuzz and kaleidoscopic indie-folk reveries. 

Battery Lane—named after the street he lived on in the D.C. area—represents the long-gestating result of that collaboration. The album, produced by Animal Scream and Jake Hanner, finds Keim’s songwriting talent in full bloom and arrangements richer than ever. The record veers fearlessly from the roaring rock & roll stomp of “25 Years,” a Strokes-inspired throwback to Keim’s garage-rock roots, to the elegant balladry of “Comet,” which finds the songwriter ruminating on the roiling chaos of the world while swooning vocal harmonies soothe his racing mind. There’s even an instrumental interlude, the pastoral “Woodley Park,” which takes influence from Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram. 

On first single “Incredible,” Keim delivers a stately ballad of the romantic order, channeling his heartbreak into a gem that reflects his melodic instinct and burbles with vintage sonic layers, from twinkling piano to plaintive mellotron. "Stop foolin' around!/I'm torn up and upside down," Keim croons as the song hits a soul-inflected fever pitch. 

That song’s lush drama contrasts with the raw, nostalgic rush of “Better Days,” which hearkens back to Keim’s garage-rock roots with what he describes as a “fast-paced Ramones/Beach Boys vibe”: pounding tempos, wall-of-sound harmonies, vintage six-string textures. Lyrically, the song summons the feeling of sitting in a cherry-colored diner seat, longing for better things in the past, a theme captured by the evocative music video, which was directed by Matt Costa. 

The album also includes a previously released Keim single, “Alice,” which was inspired by a first experience of romantic rejection. In middle school, Keim played in a She & Him-esque duo with a girl in his school. Keim had a crush on the girl, who ultimately rejected him because she was dating his best friend; “Alice” recounts this formative heartbreak. Keim first recorded the song in GarageBand at age 16; here, “Alice” finally gets the raucous, exuberant rendition it deserves, replete with dense layers of slide guitar and a pounding percussive stomp. (Speaking of unconventional percussion, the track opens with the sound of Josh Sickels smacking a cement brick in the studio: “It sounds like a railroad,” Keim raves.)

If Battery Lane serves as a loosely autobiographical narrative about Keim’s formative years, its title track, named after a street in Bethesda, MD, forms a pair with “Washington D.C.,” a kind of wistful elegy for Keim’s time in the titular city: “I’m staring down a city I don’t live in anymore/And I fell in love with living and remember life is short,” the singer muses.

Even at his most forlorn moments, Keim’s music is brightened by an inherent optimistic spirit. “We’re gonna be alright,” Keim repeats during the mantra-like outro of “Wash Away the Pain,” which he wrote following a trip to Las Vegas with a friend who was going through a personal crisis. It’s a rousing tune that combines psychedelic harmonies with glimmers of flamenco guitar. And on the closing “Comet,” Keim finds solace in romance as the world around him burns: “So hold onto me tight/As we explode into the night,” he croons.

For the wunderkind songwriter, Battery Lane is an artistic coming-of-age, and a reintroduction of sorts. “I grew up listening to lots of indie rock and 1,2,3, but then I shifted into the hardcore garage direction,” Keim says. “Now I’m finding my voice as an artist.” 

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