Music / Declan McKenna
Review: Declan McKenna, Thekla
The 2015 winner of Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition has come a long way in two short years. At just 18, McKenna has achieved enormous success, leading to 40 different record companies competing for him. Monday night was the first night of his UK tour and saw McKenna perform to a sold out crowd at Thekla.
You couldn’t have asked for anything more from a support act in terms of warming up the crowd than London-based Girli. From the way they showered the crowd with a bag of tampons, to performing one of their songs from within the crowd in their matching pink-flamed dungarees, I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it.
McKenna’s set got off to a literal bang. He entered the stage deadpan, with his eyes lined with Cleopatra-esque eyeliner and set off a golden confetti cannon into the crowd.
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As a songwriter, he manages to disguise heavy subject matter in the form of perfectly-formed pop songs. Quite often you don’t realise the significance of what he is saying and just want to dance – his song Paracetamol being an example of this. After the opening few bars, the crowd went wild – a response that seemed strange to me when you consider that it’s written about badly-handled media representation of LGBT communities.
McKenna played a mixture of released and unreleased tracks, with many members of the audience seeming to know all of the words. During a new song a little voice could be heard singing along with McKenna causing Declan to pause and ask, “How do you know the words?” He was clearly taken aback by the dedication of his fans.
Despite his success, McKenna is yet to release his debut, and with its imminent release you would think that he would utilise this opportunity to promote it. So, when he started mentioning a date from a week today, I assumed he was going to plug his album – but no, he was reminding everyone to register to vote. Although most of the crowd were probably too young, it was inspiring nonetheless to see someone using their influence in such a responsible way.
I think it’s fair to say that artists that have as much substance and widespread appeal as Declan McKenna are few and far between, and that there hasn’t been anyone like him in a long time. In a passionate and articulate manner, he manages to express all the confusion and disillusion of being a young person observing what’s going on in the world.
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