Declan McKenna has shared a new single, ‘Beautiful Faces’, which is taken from his upcoming new album. You can listen to the track below.
McKenna’s second album, ‘Zeros’ is released on May 15. The album was recorded in Nashville and is the follow up to his acclaimed 2017 debut, ‘What Do You Think About The Car?’
The new single is described as “a brave new anthem for doomed youth” and a song “about young people in the young people in the modern world and how intimidating it can be. How scary it is to see so much and feel as though you’re doing so little.”
Speaking about the song, McKenna said: “I wanted it to be a big song…Scary big. It very much relates to now, but I wanted to reimagine social media in this future-sphere where it has become even more immersive so that we cannot see where it ends and we begin.”
You can listen to the song here:
McKenna will headline Islington Assembly Hall on February 12 ahead of further events in Ramsgate and Guilford. He’s also due to appear at ‘This Is Tomorrow Festival’ in Newcastle this summer. You can see a list of his live dates below.
February
10 – Music Hall, Ramsgate
11 – The Boileroom, Guildford
12 – Islington Assembly Hall, London
Speaking to NME last year about his new album, McKenna said: “I think this album is kind of a slightly different step compared to my last album; just a little bit more considered and a little bit of a step in a direction where I’m giving a bit more purpose to every part of the song as opposed to just kind of writing songs and then being like, ‘Oh okay, going to release an album now!’ Which is a bit like what the first album was for me, as I was still learning.”
His last single, ‘British Bombs’, was released last August. Speaking about the last single, McKenna said: “’British Bombs’ is a tune I wrote about the hypocrisy of the British arms trade…Not only do we still engage in wars far away from our homes, which settle nothing and fuel extremism in the aftermath, we sell weapons to other countries full well knowing where they end up.”
He continued: “I wanted to write a song that was outright against war, in any form. Violence breeds violence and I just don’t think the world is too complex to set a peaceful precedent, but it seems the business of war is what keeps happening. To say it’s a shame feels like a huge understatement.”
