AP – British pop singer-songwriter Declan McKenna is back with his third studio album, the bright and experimental What Happened to the Beach?
At 16, McKenna burst onto the music scene with his 2015 hit Brazil, a protest song about FIFA’s politics, a song that’s since earned over 480 million streams on Spotify.
McKenna went on to win Glastonbury’s emerging artists award in 2015 and released his debut album What Do You Think About the Car? in 2017.
His second record, the 2019 concept album Zeros, rose to number two in the UK charts, celebrated for its ambitiousness.
What Happened to the Beach? purposefully moves away from the artiste’s previous thematic projects, and instead reveals that McKenna, now 25, is focused on sonic experimentation.
The record was made largely in Los Angeles.
That location and its chill, sunny, sometimes blasé attitudes served as inspiration for McKenna, who told Rolling Stone UK that the album “doesn’t always demand your attention” in the way some of his past works have. Instead, many of the tracks act like soundscapes, collages of feelings and observations represented by layered instrumentals, found sounds and distorted vocals.
By not “demanding attention,” the tracks are free to become melodically strange and compelling – immersing the listener in the buzzed, dreamlike world they exist within instead of simply soundtracking reality.
That’s especially felt in Breath of Light set to a background of guitar, percussion and synths, with contorted whispers and hums.
Then there are moments like I Write the News, WOBBLE and the album’s three collaged interludes, Mystery Planet Pt 1-3, that shake the listener out of that familiar atmosphere for a moment, almost as if to remind them that they’re under McKenna’s trance. For example: The second and third Mystery Planet honour the album’s geographic muse with radio sounds and warped repetitions of the spoken phrase Los Angeles.
Throughout the project, it’s clear that this is simply a freer version of the McKenna listeners have come to know at play – one who’s willing to make boundary-pushing, personality-revealing choices with his productions, just as he always has with his lyrical topics. – Elise Ryan
