King Creosote – Bombshell
Kenny’s gone pop! Lord a’mighty what is happening? Well from the surface what I would imagine is happening is this: after ten years of releasing necessarily low-fi and low budget DIY marvels, he must have had to shelve so many ideas because he had to be able to record everything he released in his own front room, which would have ruled out most of the songs on this album. Now however, a certain Mr. Anderson is brimming with confidence at the increasing success of all things both Fence and Creosote, and suddenly has the backing to do what he pleases. So whereas previously all his releases pretty much had to be as minimalist as possible, suddenly he has a whole range of new toys to play with and has had a bloody good go at what can be done with Big Shiny Production.
After all that, Bombshell actually opens gently with a classic, heartbreaking example of one of his trademark laments, showcasing what is truly one of the most affecting and saddest voices around. He seems to be either easing us in gently or pulling us onto a punch, whichever way you want to look at it. The first sign that things are going to be different comes a short way into second track, Home in a Sentence, which starts familiarly enough. Almost fifty second in however, there is a sudden appearance of what sounds suspiciously like a rock guitar – The Pictish Trail has come out to play! The song then builds quickly into a proper, unashamed power-pop track which for hard core Creosote fans will be a genuine culture shock. At this point people will presumably either jump ship entirely or stick around and see what on earth he’s up to.
Well there’s no messing about, the next track is one of the poppiest, catchiest and most overtly danceable songs KC has ever written. You’ve No Clue Do You has a bouncy, repetitive chorus, a splendid running Cluedo (That’s ‘Clue’, Americans) metaphor, with just enough of Kenny’s gently familiar sadness in the slight wavers into falsetto to give the song a lovely balance of emotional undercurrents. And on it goes. There’s even some proper rock riffs in WAL, really fucking good ones too, and there’s pop – indie pop everywhere!
Well I have heard quite a few King Creosote fans lament this departure into Shiny Production territory, as well as the bigger sound, but I really don’t buy this. It will never be my favourite KC album because ultimately I love sparse, sad music the most and I always have, but it is bloody, bloody good all the same. What makes Kenny Kenny for me is his voice and his lyrics and both are completely intact here. ‘One in a dozen, but you’ve seen the state of the other eleven’ and ‘You know when hands touch and there’s that spark of electrical something or other, well there’s none of that’ are classic Creosote, and the lilting, plaintive voice is still there as well. It’s just that now he has more toys to play with.
In the end, no-one who’s seen the Fence Collective boys go mental together – including, I swear, James Yorkston of all people, playing power-chords like a nutter and pogo-ing around the stage – will be surprised at the bigger, bolshier sound this record embraces at times. It may be a surprise to hear it on record, and as I said, I will always prefer the sadder stuff, but this is still an excellent album and there are some genuine KC classics on it: Leslie, No Clue Do You, None of That, Nooks, Cockleshell, the list goes on. And watching the Creosote band bouncing around and fannying about on stage at the End of the Road Festival, and listening to this exuberant record as well, it just looks like absolutely brilliant fucking fun to be a part of the Fence Collective, and in particular Kenny Anderson, at the moment. Given it’s taken over ten years of slog to get here, it’s about as well deserved a vindication as you get in the music industry.
King Creosote – Leslie
King Creosote – Nooks
Amazing! Glad to find these. Thank you.
Welcome indeed.
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I like that very much. Never heard of him before. He’s very different musically, but it sounds from your description like he’s got some things in common with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. The transition from low-fi to shiny can be traumatic for the faithful, I suppose, but Darnielle seems to have weathered the storm just fine.
I hadn’t thought of that actually, but it’s an excellent comparison. I’d say Darnielle is more miserable, where as KC tends to be more melancholy, which is perhaps a spurious distinction. And actually, some of KC’s earlier stuff does sound quite a bit more Mountain Goatsy than this.