Each song on Cade Cur’s debut album, Mise En Genie, finds Keup’s narrators embodying various noxious male personae (hints of Harvey Weinstein/ Jerry Falwell Jr./ Trump and others) over disarmingly catchy production reminiscent of Lou Reed’s Transformer album.

The project began in late 2015 but gained clarity and urgency for Keup both personally, as he and his wife raise 3 young daughters, and more broadly within the current political climate. The latter also prompted Keup to examine the messaging he received as a young man coming of age in the same all-boys, DC-area prep school scene under scrutiny in the Kavanaugh hearings (Keup attended Gonzaga College High School - the Jesuit archrival of Kavanaugh’s Georgetown Prep.)

The album was recorded at Keup’s White Star Sound studio (located on his farm outside of Charlottesville, VA) and was produced by Keup and Cade Cur bandmates, Adam Smith (Zen Mother) and Colin Killalea (Albert Hammond, Natalie Prass). Additional musicians included Tommy Crane (Port St. Willow), Frank LoCrasto (Cass McCombs, Parquet Courts), Daniel Clarke (Natalie Prass, War On Drugs), and John O’Reilly Jr. (fun.) with additional vocalists Sanders Bohlke (SVIBES) and Sleepwalkers’ Austin and Michael York. The project was mixed by Darrell Thorp (Radiohead, Beck), Danny Kalb (Beck) and Stewart Myers.

To create the album artwork, Keup enlisted the artist Tracy Maurice, known for her work as Arcade Fire’s creative director. Her cover art concept is based on the high-heeled shoe, and glass slipper in particular, as being symbolic of patriarchal ideas about women’s sexuality.