We’re not sure if this is more of a Tuesday afternoon album or a Friday morning joint, but if you are full of turmoil or in a contemplative zone the new record by Keaton Henson might calm your spirit and soothe your soul.
Henson usually writes quite good songs with a bit of a Bon Iver type vocal style and titles like Josh T Pearson (check out Sweetheart What Have You Done For Us) but for this album he’s taken those writing techniques to produce pseudo-classical tone poems that, artfully mixed with ambient noise, are rather lovely miniatures like this one Elevator Song -
It comes out as very artful music that might sound OK in a very tasteful lift. And the guest cello of Ren Ford makes them very rich in texture.
Henson looks like a serious dude and it may well be that he is. This music is certainly a bit more serious than most of the rest of things that are around and about. Maybe that’s why people don’t play his music much and why we didn’t notice it had come out this year. It sort of falls between …
But it isn’t daunting or challenging, just raw and beautiful and we’re glad we didn’t miss out on it totally and caught up – even if we were a bit late.
-TH
Keaton’s Romantic Works is out now where all good records are sold | streamed
