The Artist: Keaton Henson
Keaton Henson doesn’t tour. He rarely gives interviews. For a long time, he barely left his house. A visual artist as well as a musician, he first released music privately - songs not meant to be heard by anyone. But they leaked, quietly gathered attention and revealed a singular voice.
His work isn’t performative. It’s private by nature - diaries turned into records. He sings like he’s trying not to wake someone in the next room, his tremble as much a part of the sound as the lyrics themselves.
Before Birthdays, his 2010 debut Dear… introduced a skeletal, broken-hearted aesthetic. Birthdays widened the lens - still intimate, but with a few moments of catharsis.
The Record: Birthdays (2013)
Birthdays sounds like someone barely holding it together.
The album opens with Teach Me, just a voice and an aching acoustic guitar, so soft it’s almost transparent. 10am Gare du Nord moves with hushed restraint - a fragile sketch of distance and departure, while Kronos builds to something urgent and volatile.
Often, there’s beauty in the restraint. Lying to You is devastating in its simplicity. You is a love letter written with a shaking hand.
Even the more elaborate arrangements - like on Sweetheart, What Have You Done To Us - never break the spell.
It’s an album about loving too much and saying too little.
The kind of heartbreak that’s soft-spoken but absolute.
Play Now:
🔊 Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube
Start With:
- You - aching, poetic, honest
- Lying to You - quiet devastation
- Sweetheart, What Have You Done to Us - a fragile crescendo