Review Summary: new folk order
Long before artists like Ben Howard, Damien Rice, or Glen Hansard broke with their roots to dabble into progressive song structures or electronic bleep-bloops, there was Kenny Anderson. Starting in 2007, the Scottish singer-songwriter better known as King Creosote paired with famed electronic artist Jon Hopkins as a producer, culminating in the well-renowned collaboration “Diamond Mind,” which seamlessly blended waves of electronica and music concrete into the King’s aching, swoon-worthy ballads. While Hopkins had continued success in his solo career, Anderson’s slow stream of releases has faded back into obscurity. And that’s a damn shame, because
I DES is far and away the best folk album of the year.
From the start, King Creosote incorporates his progressive leanings without getting caught in the push/pull of breaking tradition or upholding it. While this conflict proves a compelling backbone for a great many modern folk records, it’s exciting to hear an artist with a frictionless blend of styles that’s as warming and assured as any barroom melody. The bracing, bassy beat of opener “It’s Sin That’s Got Its Hold on Us,” is quickly compounded by acoustic strumming and angelic strings, forming the most direct mix of the record’s usual ingredients off the bat. If most tracks here feel molded from familiar folktronica clay, each and every one has a distinct identity and reason for you to fall for it.
Even relatively-straightlaced folk offerings like “Burial Bleak” and “Walter de la Nightmare” are pristinely produced, bathing the listener in every instrumental flourish and sublime vocal melody; there’s no misjudged attempt to capture the stripped-back tavern-bound performances of his stomping grounds, an approach could easily backfire against the full, open-armed approach to music and life the record espouses. You can’t open your record with lines like “The past, it does not exist,” and get away with being plain.
After all, its strangest excursions are among its strongest. While the first half of the record is comprised of relatively modest folk-adjacent tunes, there is a hiccup. But after hearing “Susie Mullen,” you’ll believe in good hiccups. Yes, the song completely derails the tracklist with an absolutely ridiculous sample of “a souvenir camel toy from Egypt” that spouts the same nursery rhyme in Arabic for the remainder of the tune. Sure it’s supremely annoying, but it’s fricking catchy, and grounds the song in a bouncy playfulness that never abates. As it takes off with soaring vocals (“it’s over twenty yearsssss tooo late”) and modulating synthisizers, it won’t be long before you realize that this is the veritable “pop song” of the album. How fun is that?
And if that isn’t your idea of a good time,
I DES ’s second half comprises of the splendid post-folk offering “Please Come Back I Will Listen, I Will Behave, I Will Toe the Line” and the massive “Drone in B#,” which both clock in at 13 and 36 (and a half) minutes respectively. Like Saturn and Jupiter, these two tracks more than eclipse the size of everything before it put together—but let this impatient critic assure you: they are well worth it. “Drone in B#” does what it says on the tin and then some, winding in and out of warbly electronics and ambience to occasionally dabble in jam-rock grooves and skyscraper-high synths. It provides a beautiful addendum to the record, but “Please Come Back I Will Listen…” is the true climax. Like an EP unto itself, the track is bookended by spectral female vocals, pierced through the center by glorious guitars, and delivers heart-rending pangs for lost love in its softer moments.
Even if spelling the album’s structure out so explicitly makes everything seem overwrought, the opposite is true. If anything, the record is buoyed by a constant looseness. Whereas many of his contemporaries are content to dip their toes into interesting soundscapes before shuffling back off to familiar territory, Kenny Anderson is a true adventurer who has proved even more capable and daring with age. After an album like this, King Creosote should be a household name for any who hold forward-thinking post-folk artists in esteem. Thankfully, he doesn’t really care.
