Cheshunt, says Declan McKenna, is not particularly noteworthy. In more recent years the young musician’s Hertfordshire hometown has become part of the London commuter belt. “It had Tesco’s headquarters for a while,” he says, somewhat morosely, “but I think that’s moved away now.” He brightens a little. “But Victoria Beckham famously went to the same school as me.” He chuckles. “According to my school’s Wikipedia page, there’s two notable students: Victoria Beckham and me. That’s quite funny.”
Another famous musician, Cliff Richard, grew up in the town more than a few decades before McKenna’s time, but in the 2010s the burbs offered scant opportunities for young guitar-wielding singers; most of the town’s venues, he says, had closed down by the time he began playing music seriously. Luckily, the 25-year-old’s large family — he is the youngest of six — fostered a love of music from an early age. And, yes, the name is a dead giveaway: there are Irish roots on both sides of the family.
“My dad’s mum is from Cavan, and the rest of my grandparents are all from Cork,” he says. “My parents are both from Irish families that moved over to the UK. So all Irish family, basically.” He grins. “I could play football for Ireland. I’ve been meaning to sort my passport out, actually. Post-Brexit, that’s becoming more and more important.”
McKenna, wearing wide-rimmed specs and sporting an even trendier mullet, is speaking from his home in Brighton, a much more happening place for one of the rising stars of UK music. The Irish links don’t end with his family; his muffled giggles when he talks about his former housemate and bandmate Josh McClorey (formerly of the Cavan band The Strypes) suggest there are stories to be told; he also calls the Dublin singer CMAT a friend. McKenna recently paid tribute to his roots by filming a video for his song Nothing Works, directed by Finn Keenan, in the Imperial Bar in Cavan Town. “An … experience,” he says, laughing again. “A great experience.”
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That song was lifted from McKenna’s recently released excellent third album, What Happened to the Beach? which is a musical and lyrical departure for the indie-pop-rock artist. He first emerged as a teenager, with songs like Brazil and Paracetamol, the former a protest song of sorts about corrupt multinational organisations (including Fifa), the latter inspired by the suicide of a transgender girl in the United States.
Written when McKenna was about 15 (he won Glastonbury’s emerging talent competition at 16), they saddled him with the label of “socially conscious teenage wunderkind”. He shrugs off any notion that his upbringing inspired his songwriting, dispelling the often-cited misnomer that his dad was involved in local politics.
“That’s been misconstrued. I mean, there’s maybe something inherently political about it, but he worked for Broxbourne Council as the community care officer. I think it was more when I was a teenager in school, and maybe having certain conversations, I started becoming a bit more aware of social injustice. I remember having a lot of frustrated conversations and arguments in school, and feeling frustrated with a lot of people who’d be bigoted … just seeing all elements of your community, being in school and, I guess, having access to the internet and being able to read about different things as well. Looking at things going on around the church — because I was raised in the Catholic Church — stuff like that made me feel like there was a lot of injustice.”
As a clearly articulate teenager, he was angered by the fact that his opinion was disregarded. “When Brexit came around, I remember a lot of people not being able to vote on it — and then the fact that it didn’t actually happen for three years, so we were all in our early 20s and hadn’t had a say.” He shakes his head. “It was a gradual thing, but it became what I wrote about for a long time.”
His ability to filter bigger issues through his songwriting lens earned him a voice-of-a-generation tag, but he laughs it off. “Being a spokesperson was never really what I wanted. I was just trying to give a perspective and, perhaps, shine a light on some issues. But, yeah, all of a sudden it became a much bigger deal than just that. But no one really likes their unique selling point, do they?” He laughs. “No one likes the thing that people talk about them for.”
In any case, What Happened to the Beach? is a little less forthright on such weighty topics, with many songs taking a more personal, laid-back approach to life. In the past, he says, external influences have affected his writing; being signed to a big label, you can “wind up in a big studio producing things in a different way to what is actually more natural to me. So it was almost just going back to that [bedroom intimacy]; that just lends itself to being a bit different.”
The lyrical content has been shaken up, too, as he shirks the serious young man designation that dogged his early material. Now, as songs such as the giddy Phantom Buzz or the laid-back psychpop of Mezzanine demonstrate, he is more concerned with having a bit of fun with his music.
“Making the same statements over and over again, I don’t really see the point in doing that,” he says. “And I think there’s more to humanity than projecting these outward statements that maybe my earlier stuff consists of. Really, I was working on music that was based on feeling. Some of that feels very intimate, and some is kind of abstract and in-the-moment — but it’s not necessarily like a poem that reads from start to finish.”
Musical touchpoints this time around include a glut of New Zealand bands that he was listening to, from Unknown Mortal Orchestra to Connan Mockasin, as well as the English space-pop artist LA Priest. Throw in the likes of The Beatles and Tame Impala and you’ve got quite a heady psychpop brew.
“Stuff that has that slight ‘intimate but wonky’ kind of feel to it,” he says. “All sorts of things, even Gorillaz. [They] were probably one of the first bands I listened to who had some of these kinds of ideas, where the production is done in that sort of direct, intimate way and is made up of lots of different parts, and it’s not like ‘a band’ in that way. But, honestly, it’s such an amalgamation, because I think I’ve tried to balance something quite organic and something quite digital as well; something that’s been recorded on laptops, and done bit by bit, but is still not lacking in humanity.”
Recording in Los Angeles for the first time certainly helped to set the tone; there is a telling line on the album’s opening track, Wobble: “Life’s really changing / I used to cry at home all night / Now I might in the sunshine.”
“That’s the kind of the ethos of the album, to do something that just feels good,” McKenna says. “Working in LA was great. I mean, there’s just much more space and time for everything I was doing. It wasn’t like we were going in for three weeks and had to finish the album; we had so much time there, and we’d just potter about and get back into the studio, which was Luca [Gialuca Buccelatti] the producer’s livingroom, for most of it.
“We’d come back when we had some ideas, and that kept everything fresh and everything moving. So it was a really good experience and very, very different from any of the other albums that I’ve made. The sunshine really does change the way that you work. It relaxes you. I could just commit to an idea for a little bit longer.”
His most innovative and buoyant album so far, it does feel like something of a new era.
“I’ve definitely got lots more confidence … confidence in my ideas and my ability to execute them, through making this album,” he says. “So it’s not, like, ‘this is what all my records are going to sound like now’ because I like to approach things differently each time and keep things as fresh as I can. But there’s definitely a newfound confidence and sort of trust in myself. And I think I’ll carry that forward.”
- Declan McKenna plays Ulster Hall, Belfast on Monday, April 1st, and the 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Tuesday, April 2nd, and Wednesday, April 3rd
