21-year-old London-born singer Declan McKenna released his second studio album, Zeros, on 4th September. After first garnering international attention in 2015 with his single “Brazil” criticising FIFA for awarding Brazil the role of hosting the World Cup without addressing the lines of poverty that run deep through the country and its people, the LP is a thematic successor to his initial breakthrough song.
The project is punctuated by Bowie-inspired glam rock instrumentation and intoxicatingly headstrong lyricism that tackles major issues including environmentalism and gender politics, also seeded with slick metaphor. The euphoric production definitely takes some influence from indie pop artists while the heavily political songwriting immediately makes me think of the likes of Sam Fender. McKenna’s vocals are powerful and varied across the ten-track album, and while at times I find the record to be a little overzealous in its approach, it’s definitely a solid body of work with lots of replay value for me.
Among the four singles issued prior to the LP’s COVID-delayed release, “The Key to Life on Earth” and “Be an Astronaut” stood out to me the most; the former for its dissection of British youth culture (“dirty streets these days are graced by Nikes of black and green”) and toxic interactions that many people face day after day as well as exploring the monotony of life especially during its repetitive outro, and the latter for its direct second-person lyrical approach discussing standing up to bullies and critics in addition to gender roles that stipulate that emotion in most men is non-existent and should be looked down upon as a sign of weakness. It also insinuates that dreams cannot always be fulfilled the way you want them to, a message clearly linked to the song’s title and the track’s subject Daniel, who reappears in the gloomy “Daniel, You’re Still a Child” which was also released as a single.
Another track that stood out to me was the penultimate song “Sagittarius A*” (named after the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, explained by McKenna himself to represent the inevitability of death and destruction as eventually Earth will be pulled into it), which continues the environmental themes of the tunes “Twice Your Size” and “Rapture” that immediately precede it in the track listing; it mentions several popular tourist attractions such as the Andes, Cannes and Borneo that have been severely degraded by the sheer volume of visitors year in, year out while Declan sarcastically takes aim at the rich one percent who sit and do nothing as we continue to destroy our surroundings: “you feel it pouring and you must run, you must drop your bags and your trust fund, because the life you lead’s so fucking alien”, bringing up a possible end-of-the-world scenario explored further in the aptly-named “Rapture”. I enjoyed this track particularly because it represents the anger that many younger people feel towards older generations who paid no mind to warnings about global warming and mass extinctions until it was too late, leading to the likely irreversible state of the world now.
To conclude, Zeros is a very strong body of work with a lot to say for itself, and McKenna definitely outdoes himself through his wizened songwriting and confident vocal delivery, though there are times the production falls a little to the wayside or the tracks’ rock influences cause them to blend together occasionally, showing that although there is room for improvement on his third LP he has made a solid start, especially for such a young artist.
8/10
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