His work for The Wire (for whom he wrote from 1996 to 2015) was highly influential, helping to focus the magazine more towards coverage of new experimental rock, noise, folk, industrial and psychedelic music.

His most frequently cited article is a cover story that appeared in the August 2003 issue entitled "New Weird America", where Keenan coined the phrase "free folk".

His article incited a slew of hate mail that derided hypnagogic pop as the "worst genre created by a journalist".

[8] Edna O'Brien described reading his third novel, Xstabeth (White Rabbit, 2020), as "feel[ing] like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music".

[11][12] He is also the author of England's Hidden Reverse, a biography of Coil, Current 93 and Nurse with Wound.