Going back to memories of his youth, Keaton Henson’s ninth studio album, Parader, is a light grunge/folk-rock record with plenty of well-written lyrics to really make the listener feel the points of the songs.
The English musician began his career as an illustrator before starting to record songs in his London apartment. Because of his artistic endeavours, the cover art is reminiscent of a story of starting over again and you can hear that message in the lyrics of this album.
There’s a really great use of harmonies to accompany the melodic guitar that give the listener that melancholic feeling. The percussion gets you into the groove once it comes in, too.
The vocals are very wispy until you hit the chorus of most of the songs, however, it does feel a bit monotonous after a while. This isn’t to say that the vocals lack range, they just seem to be stuck in a level above a whisper. Henson has said that he was nervous about being too loud, but it just came out—while I can hear that in the instrumentation, I wish there was more of that funnelled into the vocal projection.
Each song gives the listener a lot to chew on. Parader feels like a five-course meal; you can really savour each song. It’s hard to place in any one category, as it has grungey anger and frustration, yet the soft beginnings to some of these tracks with the light guitar and breathy vocals makes it on the edge of folk.
There are a lot of melodies on Parader that I’ve never heard before, which makes it really unique. I particularly like “Lazy Magician,” which features a guest spot from Julia Steiner—her energy really balances out the sadness in the rest of the album.
“Conversation Coach” just comes out of left field in the middle of the album, with the warped guitar to shake things up a bit. You can also hear this on the track “Operator.”
The last track, “Performer,” is the most heartfelt one, in my opinion. You can feel the emotion in all the songs on this album but this one really almost made me cry.
Listening to this album on a cold, rainy, winter day, you might get lost in the feels like I did.