Meteor Infant's debut album charts life's glorious highs and bitter lows, before arriving at hope

Australia Broadcast Center

15-05-2025

Singer songwriter Liam Keenan wanted his baby girl to hear his debut album.
"My fiancé and I have been trying to start a family through IVF and it's been over three years now," Keenan told ABC News.
"We've had five attempts now at it and we finally did get pregnant late last year.
"So, we were over the moon, super excited and it coincided with me writing all these songs and thinking about not just my ancestors who were before me but thinking about who will come after me."
The couple began their IVF journey when Keenan, 30, was 27 and his partner, 27, was 24 due to some health issues that can lead to infertility.
Devastatingly, their first child named Una didn't survive the pregnancy.
"Sadly, she did pass away halfway through our pregnancy at five months and that only happened in January," Keenan said.
The Gomeroi artist from North West NSW who makes music under the name Meteor Infant released his debut studio album Piliga Circumstance on Friday.
Keenan also grapples on the lead single Lagoon with the recent loss of his grandfather, who had ambitions to be a professional boxer, running away from his home in Inverell as a teenager to join a travelling boxing troupe, only for his mum to find him, grab him by the ear and bring him home.
"It's just me sort of reflecting on his life growing up as a young Indigenous man in the country, trying to get a leg up economically, and I guess it's about Country as well because it's a direct literal reference to some lagoons on Country where a lot of other important ceremonies and cultural events took place in the past.
"And I was just thinking about him and me wishing I could really connect with him more while he was still here and sort of hear those stories about the old people and about culture that sadly did get lost in time and through the generations."
Keenan, who was raised in Tamworth and Armidale and has always been fascinated by the Piliga, had an epiphany of sorts while going through his dad's record collection as a 14-year-old.
"[That's] when you switch from the point of thinking they're annoying to actually thinking 'this is kind of cool. I might listen to this now.' And 'what's he doing with the guitar on that song?'
"And my parents bought me a cheap local guitar at a garage sale or something and I just sort of started writing songs at home in my bedroom, writing poetry and lyrics.
"And I was really into artists that my dad was into like Bob Dylan and Neil Young to begin with but also … Steely Dan, The Eagles, all that sort of legendary big name 70s stuff."
Keenan was also inspired by artists closer to home.
"I also grew up listening to a lot of my mum's records, listening to Paul Kelly," he said.
"She was a big fan of Indigenous acts like No Fixed Address, even elder singer songwriters like Uncle Roger Knox who's actually a relation of mine, that felt really special knowing that there were people in my family who were musicians just doing it."
Knox isn't the only family member who has impacted Keenan's career choices. His grandmother is trailblazing filmmaker Madeline McGrady.
"My nan has also been a huge influence on me as an artist," Keenan said.
"She was a pretty amazing pioneer documentary filmmaker in the 80s doing a lot of documenting of Indigenous activism and land rights and protest movements in Brisbane and Redfern and she has always been sort of inspiring me and pushing me to be ambitious and to keep going forward."
Keenan and his fiancé still hope to start a family one day.
"We've been taking some time from it all but we are going to try again," Keenan said.
"You feel really isolated when you're this young and you're going through it.
"My partner has quite advanced endometriosis so that's a big factor.
"A lot of the doctors still really don't understand so there's still a big part of it that's mysterious and that can also leave you feeling really lost for answers."
He warns that parenthood isn't something prospective mums and dads should put off.
"Get cracking because you never know."
Piliga Circumstance under Keenan's stage name Meteor Infant is out now.