Review Summary: Romantic Jerks
As a man who clearly second guesses himself at every turn, Keaton Henson probably spent as much time deliberating the route he would take with his next album as his fans did. Another electronic foray? Back to the lo-fi indie that put him on the map originally? Maybe he'll go shoegaze this time? What we ended up with is sort of an umbrella over everything (except the shoegaze part), a career retrospective meshing all his potential albums together in a muddled but beautiful way.
Keaton's voice, always the identifiable marker of his emotion, seems different somehow – slightly gruffer and deeper, his falsetto somewhat faded. On lines like "my wounds are open to see/but don't take 'em seriously" he sounds less like the sad, delicate Keaton and more pissed off, channeling the furious energy of "Kronos" without ever touching the distortion pedal. The focus on piano foreshadowed by compilation
5 Years pays off; keys-heavy tracks "No Witnesses", "Old Lovers in Dressing Rooms" and "How Could I Have Known" combine the breadth and scope of
Romantic Works with the minimalism key to
Dear… for some of his strongest work to date. Instrumentals "March" and "Gabe" see Henson attempting to bring the glitchy vocal trappings of
Behaving together with his newfound love for cinematic strings to moderate success.
Yet for an artist who has essentially never dipped in quality for his entire career, there are some bizarre misses on
Kindly Now. "Holy Lover" attempts a multi-tracked
a cappella intro joined by an off-kilter drum snap halfway through, but ends up sounding like a half-baked demo Henson forgot to add instruments to in the final mix. Meanwhile "Comfortable Love" calls back to
Birthdays with its quiet-to-loud dynamic shifts, but a strangely muddy, botched chorus kills all the momentum that the explosion brings. Lyrically, he stresses one too many times how love isn't enough and he doesn't believe in it anymore to the point of fatiguing the idea, but the broken vocal delivery ensures the emotion behind it remains intact.
Kindly Now isn't perfect, and feels more like a transition to something truly spectacular where everything in Henson's bag of tricks can be perfectly utilised; for now, it'll do just fine.
