Parader

On 2023s House Party, experimental composer and confessional singer/songwriter Keaton Henson -- known in his native England for only rare live appearances due to chronic anxiety -- adopted an alter ego that allowed him to take on a more upbeat countenance and rock out a little (Big Star and the Replacements were a couple of its inspirations). Two years later, the wholly personal Parader finds him stepping back into himself and his persistent self-doubt, but with some hard-earned musical extroversion. Here, that takes the form of occasional injections of the grunge rock of his youth, including on the opener, "Dont I Just." A song that opens with the lines "Dont I just overdo it/Dont I just let you down" before continuing to enumerate perceived flaws, it begins with a delicate, note-by-note guitar line and a brittle murmur, then adds amplified strumming and a backing singer, lands on the chorus with a full band, and finally cranks up the volume for a howling melodic guitar solo at the end, a development that Henson has described as his youth bursting out. This juxtaposition of soft-spoken self-examination and cathartic grunge is remarkably effective throughout the album. Henson mentally time travels on other songs on Parader as well, such as on the spare, slide guitar-inflected "Day in New York" ("They want me to play for a label that I cant afford/Im afraid theyll get bored"); "Past It," which looks back on his career as a musician; and the tender "Tourniquet," which includes flashbacks to a lonely year spent living in California a decade earlier. More consistently an attractively hooky outpouring of self-loathing, Parader offers a singsongy plea for help talking to others ("Conversation Coach"), a grungy lament about his mind constantly merging the present and memory ("Insomnia"), and the midtempo "Lazy Magician," in which he refers to himself as "a lazy amateur magician/I cant even make myself disappear." The latter song is a rare duet for Henson that was co-written with and features Ratboys Julia Steiner. The albums one other collaboration is the intimate "Furl," a harmonious first-time co-write with his wife, Danielle Fricke, who has an incorporeal presence throughout by way of lyrical asides. Significantly, Parader ends with "Performer," a fragile rock lullaby that ties together the albums themes of music, memory, and mental health, including the summarizing statement: "I am the parader/The person who parades around showing their wounds for a living." ~ Marcy Donelson