185: Keaton Henson w/ Julia Steiner - Lazy Magician
In the decade-and-some since his hushed breakthrough, Keaton Henson has crafted a rich and varied back catalogue that has taken in everything from Big Star-influenced sparkly indie-pop to last year's truly striking instrumental work Somnambulant Cycles.
In spite of those varied endeavours, he remains somewhat pigeonholed as a soft, confessional singer-songwriter but he takes another stride away from that persona with the release of 'Lazy Magician', a brand new stand-alone single and a duet with Julia Steiner, of long-time GFP-faves Ratboys.
On the surface, the two seem to inhabit different orbits entirely, but at the heart of the collaboration is Keaton's early days playing in emo bands and hanging out at skate shops, and also his lovely for the American bands that filtered through that scene. “Julia’s voice is so evocative of that sound to me, it reminds me of when I first heard Rilo Kiley," Henson says of the new track, "She has a lot of the suburban magic-realism of the American bands I loved back then."
Described by Henson as "two lonely souls singing next to each other", the track might come from a similarly heartfelt space as his more confessional work, but the delivery itself is altogether heavier. All billowing tension broken by a surge of scuzzy distorted guitars, Henson's voice carries a somewhat unexpected bite, while Steiner performs a trick of sorts, sounding both distracted and captivating in the very same breath.
I wrote the guitar parts and first lines to the drum machine and we both sort of just free-wrote the rest. Allowing our subconscious to form the narrative. I like that it’s almost like these two lonely souls singing next to each other, but sometimes over each other, like we’re so lost in our own self-reflection we’re unaware we’re in a duet.”
Produced by the excellent Luke Sital-Singh, and with a lovely lyric video designed and animated by Elenor Kopa, 'Lazy Magician' hints at a bold new chapter on the horizon; a restless and romantic re-defining.
Watch the 'Lazy Magician' video on GFP here
