Keaton Henson
Birthdays

A broken heart, recently and somewhat clumsily stitched back together, that finally begins to beat again, albeit faintly, after dragging along for a long time only the memory of that beating. This heart cautiously embarks on a new journey in the land of Love, but everything seems different. The trees appear more barren, the waters of the streams less clear, the grass sparser and of a less vibrant green. Even the sky's fabric is now stained with some clouds that promise rain. Yet the place is the same… The land of Love! But can that heart no longer beat as it once did? Why does everything seem grayer, numbed, as if it has already been used? Or even a copy. A somewhat unsuccessful copy of that old place that once drove the beats of that heart crazy. “Birthdays” by Keaton Henson is this. An attempt to get back into the game after a long, very long wait. An attempt to relive old emotions by traversing the fertile lands of Love once again, realizing that this cannot happen. A new flame, a new relationship, a new story, yes… But that flame, compared to the blaze that preceded it, seems like only a match. And this is what torments the singer in almost all the songs of this album: the awareness of not feeling for the current partner such strong sentiments as he did for the previous one. “Teach me how to love you,” the confused Keaton asks the girl he's with in the calm “Teach Me,” the song that opens the album. By now, he realizes that he only knows how to love when he writes songs, but pretends in real life. In the delicate and crystalline “10am Gare du Nord” Keaton, hypocritically, realizes he is still too fragile and begs the girl not to hurt him: his heart has already suffered enough for the rest of his existence. “You,” perhaps musically one of the peaks of the album and decidedly more energetic than the previous tracks, is a dive into the past, a dive into true love, perhaps a memory of past happiness that he wishes wouldn’t fade away because, Keaton confesses, it was the most beautiful part of his life. Back then, he didn’t have to lie, which now he has to do every morning by the side of the new partner he is not in love with, while she is in love with him, as he confesses in “Lying to You,” accompanying that sad truth with a sweet and fragile arpeggio. Fragile as the author is at that moment. A very minimal piece, but surely loaded with melancholy. Melancholy that bursts in “Don’t Swim” which, after 3 minutes and 25 seconds of exasperating stagnation accompanied only by a cloying self-pity, explodes into an energetic and vigorous guitar solo where Keaton finally unleashes all his dissatisfaction, also letting loose in “Kronos,” the next song where, accompanied by a distorted guitar and lots of repressed anger, he vents all his frustrations for the way his previous relationship ended, regretting giving that woman everything he gave her, so much so he has very little left for his current partner, but aware that, if he could turn back time, he would do exactly the same. Next is “Beekeeper,” a very curious song: a sort of self-criticism by the singer alternating a slow, melancholic, and whiny verse with a very lively, energetic, and engaging chorus that sticks in your head from the first listen. With “Sweetheart, What Have You Done To Us” he once again regrets the old relationship. A song that, starting very calm, gains energy as it progresses, until maturing into an energetic and almost orchestral finale. In short, a very sad album, which, despite some more energetic twists, could bore many, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to sensitive, melancholic, if not even poetic souls, because it might truly give you many emotions as it did me. The broken heart, recently stitched back together of Keaton Henson might struggle to beat venturing into the land of this new Love, but his album… That indeed makes the heart beat!