Keaton Henson : Parader

Keaton Henson is shedding the ‘quiet boy’ persona that has defined much of his career. Embracing the grunge-infused sounds of his youth on new album ‘Parader’, the elusive songwriter melds emotional darkness, melancholy, and seething frustration as he reckons with the hauntings of his past: ‘I was nervous about being too loud, but then it sort of just came out’. What unravels across the album’s 12 tracks is an introspective autopsy of time as it distorts and folds to inhabit the songwriter’s present. ‘There are these disjointed snapshots’, he shares, ‘memories across time popping up amongst this collection of thoughts about what it feels like to be this age and a musician’. ‘Parader has legitimate confidence, it’s not me pretending to be anything I’m not’, Henson admits. ‘It’s maybe just me accepting that part of me is this. It’s louder and it has those bigger, louder, rasher sounds, but not from a performative point of view. Maybe I’m accepting that