The cinematic pop of Keen Dreams begins in New Orleans with the songs and guitars of James Weber Jr. A record store true-believer, James took some time away from Euclid Records in 2018 to pursue a master's degree in world history during the day, at night crafting moonlit "ballads with a beat." and drums filled out his songs with a coarse-grained candor. Taking the name of a cherished PC game, and Keen Dreams performed around the city. Bashed out live for friends and friendly rivals in downtown bars and neighborhood haunts, the songs found affinities in the angular strum and jangle guitars of college rock, the 1980s AOR turn on FM radio, and dreamy shoegaze. Demos recorded in New Orleans were loud with the spirit, but to build the "big music landscapes" on The Second Body the band sought out producer Shannon Fields, attracted by both the richly textured pop of his band Leverage Models and Fields's experience in the more liminal spaces of collective improvisation with the group Stars Like Fleas. Recording sessions at The Isokon studio in Woodstock, NY yielded a grip of lush rock tunes which Fields and the band framed with detourned pianos and soundtrack synths, harmonica ghosts, saxophones, slurred trumpets and shrieks of bass clarinet. As such, the album drifts along an x/y of cathedral composure and howl; sentiment and squall. A first body grounded in the songs; a Second Body pushing through darker canyons.