Album reviews: Declan McKenna – Zeros, and Tricky – Fall to Pieces

Declan McKenna – Zeros

★★★★☆

Declan McKenna, who won Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent competition in 2015 aged 16, had an early hit with a song about football corruption (“Brazil”). The debut album that followed showed off his knack for creating zingy guitar pop that had lots to say, tackling xenophobia (“Isombard”), religion (“Bethlehem”) and the media’s representation of LGBT+ communities (“Paracetamol”).

It turns out that McKenna wasn’t enamoured with the label of spokesperson for his generation. So on Zeros, he drops the political focus and turns to more abstract themes.

Pushing the album back from its intended March release date was a good move in more ways than one: Zeros is – for the most part – a blast of upbeat summery pop that wouldn’t have fit with the past few months’ unease. But there’s a definite sense of chaos being unleashed throughout, summed up by the urgent delivery of “You Better Believe!!!”, which opens the album with Guillemots-style indie-pop exuberance, glam-rock references, and the panicked line, “You’re gonna get yourself killed/ Before you can run”.

At 21, McKenna is exploring a range of influences, but there’s a unifying originality in his stream of earworm melodies. “Be An Astronaut” wears the David Bowie influences on its sleeve, while the country guitar tone of the synth-flecked “Twice Your Size” conjures Nashville (where the album was recorded). Elsewhere, there’s Sixties psychedelia. The chirpy “The Key to Life on Earth” saves its true euphoria for the ending, a joyful fusion of glockenspiel and in-unison singing.

Zeros is the sound of an artist pushing his creative development, and enjoying himself as he does so. Exciting stuff. EB

Tricky – Fall to Pieces

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★★★★☆

“No one sounds like me,” Tricky said in a recent interview. “And I sound like no one.”

While this is true, the trip-hop pioneer’s 14th album, Fall to Pieces, includes what he describes as “the closest I’ve got to making pop”. It’s filled with tender, lilting melodies that are followed by warped basslines; “I’m in the Doorway” lingers over enthralling vocals from Danish singer Oh Land.

Tricky has often appeared fascinated by the duality of gender. He employs female vocalists to present different sides of himself or – in the case of his dark and glitchy 1995 debut, Maxinquaye – the perspective of his late mother. On “Hate This Pain”, which stars a gut-wrenching cello solo performance by Marie-Claire Schlameus, Tricky grapples with the loss of his daughter, Mazy Topley-Bird, who died in 2019.

It’s no surprise to learn this song was recorded just a few months after his daughter’s death. His voice on the track is scarred with grief, a bare-bones whisper that scrapes over stark piano and abrupt, distant gusts of brass.

Fall to Pieces is not an easy listen. Whether on the glum, Radiohead influences of “Take Me Shopping” or on the hypnotic “Like a Stone”, which plunges the listener into darkness, Tricky plumbs the deepest fathoms of despair. But from that he’s created something beautiful. This is one of his best, and truest, albums. ROC