Just under a year after releasing Dear, the ever increasingly popular 23-year-old Keaton Henson has released his second album, Birthdays. Dear was extremely stripped back and emotional and we must say that Birthdays has followed in its footsteps.
We wandered down to the release show of Birthdays at Rough Trade West to grab our copy. Keaton was fantastic live; his voice sounds almost identical to his recordings. The vocals have a particularly raw and rough edge.For some artists this doesn’t work, but Keaton manages to use this in his music to the best possible standard. It was emotional to watch the album played live; Keaton was so nervous he had to have his lyrics on the counter in case he forgot them. There were also many songs in which he started to cry, making his songs a lot sadder than they already are. The performance was very innocent and really touched the crowd. There just weren’t many faults we could pick out.
Birthdays is, again, a depressing album, featuring the beautifully sad lyrics which are a trademark of Keaton’s work; all of which are very personal and touching. Every track is simple, featuring few vocal effects which allows the emotion in his voice to come through. Though the album features more band involvement, it has managed to stay true to its raw quality and makes for a very clean, almost live sounding performance.
The track listing on this album is fantastic, each song as good as the next. My personal favourite on the album is ‘Lying To You’ (A previous single). For some reason this song seems to make me the most emotional, and has a great lyrical story which a lot of people can probably relate too.
Perhaps the only weakness is ‘Kronos’; it is a fabulous track in itself but is very different from the rest of the album. Heavy in contrast to his usual soft and sad songs, it almost doesn’t fit in. ‘Kronos’ unfortunately received a fair share of negative feedback from Keaton fans since it was released as a single a few months ago.
By Sam Rowlands
Dance Yrself Clean
