In Conversation: Declan McKenna
Probing conspiracy theories, our need to create stories, and his exciting new album...
*Declan McKenna *surprised fans last summer, returning with a brand new single, his first since the release of *his debut LP back in 2017*.
But this song was not part of the plan for his second album. In fact, ‘British Bombs’ was a stand-alone release, a scathing attack on British foreign policy and arms sales, a song that was born out of a frustrated necessity to highlight abhorrent practice from a soon to be re-elected government. This was also a telling testament to the character of Declan McKenna, a switched on and socially conscious songwriter.
A teenager when he released his debut, Declan is now 21. Entering your twenties can be one of the most formative times of your life, with a whole heap on new societal expectations placed upon you, Declan has felt himself grow within this period. “Sometimes I need to actually just trust my instincts and not overthink things. For me it’s been a real big change and not only that, confidence has changed in me. I do feel like a very different person in a very different place to where I was making and releasing the first record”.
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For his second album ‘Zeros’, not only has his sound taken a dramatic change but the way it was recorded was all new too. Flying off to the foreign surroundings of Nashville, he had a new producer in Jay Joyce and a bigger studio space than ever before. “Jay Joyce had an amazing big open studio, that’s like a converted church. The big difference was recording stuff live, tackling stuff with a live band approach and trying to avoid getting too deep with takes”.
Nashville itself has weaved its way onto the album, with Declan admitting that there is “a little bit of a Nashville twang”. No more so than on ‘Twice Your Size’, a song that marries space with country and western, with an opening riff to don your cowboy hat to, “That’s like the space cowboy tune on the album. I remember listening to the song when we finished the album in my friend’s truck, driving through Nashville and I was like ‘this is the one!’”
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Across its runtime, ‘Zeros’ spends some time exploring the often aspirational and desirable realm of space, but with the ever-impending threat of Armageddon. Declan, like many grew up having an obsession with space and it provided him with a place to escape, “I suppose it’s more my interest in looking for something greater than ourselves, always seeking something and looking for something more”, he says.
“Writing ‘Be An Astronaut’ was one of the first tracks for the record, it was a big turning point where I wanted to talk about space but also talk about it as a dream or some great but impossible aspiration” Declan reveals. We all aspire towards different dream careers, a young Declan was no exception, “I wanted to be a chef, a footballer, an author, a long-distance runner...”, he pauses for breath, “An actor, a guitarist in a hair metal band or something, I wanted to be a lot of things. I did REALLY want to be a chef though”.
However, he was prone to the odd kitchen nightmare and his culinary palette was not the most refined, “The problem was my favourite food was mac and cheese at the time, you’re not going to have much luck becoming a chef if you only cook mac and cheese”.
When writing about the potential extinction of humanity through asteroids or rising tide levels, you may assume Declan to be a little but pessimistic, but he assures that this is not the case, “I just kind of grew up making the most of things really, making the most of my surroundings to do what I want to do and be the person I want to be. I think there’s a side of me that’s naturally optimistic but there’s also a side of me that’s not and they are often fighting these days”, which he shrugs off with a laugh.
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‘Zeros’ explores modern culture through the lens of the future, represented in space and humanity’s forward-thinking wonderment, combined with visions of the past and an unspoken impending doom that mirrors the concerns of contemporary culture. The narrative of fictional dystopia in order to contextualise ourselves has given us some truly memorable stories, something that Declan has embraced.
“I like the idea of approaching now by approaching where we could end up. It’s said that trying to look into the future or predict the future is a mugs game, it kind of is but at the same time it’s a good way to put it into context. If you can put it into the frame of the future or a slightly distant idea, people maybe welcome it a bit more than being told how awful the world is”.
A fair statement would be to say that it all feels a little tense right now, actually it has done for a while, we’re getting every conceivable warning sign that humanities self-destructive tendencies are going into overdrive.
Is the aim of an album such as ‘Zeros’ to warn us of this, or is it simply to observe the madness? “I guess it’s both because I’m talking about now and the future on almost every song. We’re being given a warning in many different ways. I think that’s kind of the thing on the record is if we don’t change course then certain things are inevitable and certain”.
The track listing could have been very different, “at one point I thought of writing the album as all of the different ways the world could end and there’s still a bit of that on the album”. Declan reveals that he has an “obsession” with doomsday preppers and flat earthers and is no stranger to the weirder corners of the internet, “I’m not like a conspiracy theorist by any stretch, I find it interesting. I guess there’s a real lesson to be learnt in understanding why people become caught up in arbitrary conspiracies. I guess everybody’s a conspiracy theorist at times”.
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Conspiracy theories have been around for a while, but their influence on popular culture was rapidly accelerated by the internet and social media platforms. From forums to Twitter, it’s hard to go a day without somebody’s conspiracy hot take. How much time does Declan spend on social media? “Every day, all the time, too much really. I do think it makes my life worse sometimes, I love so many things about the internet but you when you spend a day just scrolling and you’re like, what did I do today?”
The negative connotations of social media are there for all to see, it can increase anxiety, make us feel inferior to others and so much more. If Declan could change one thing about social media right now, it would be the addictive qualities, “people become almost dependent on social media and that element with instant gratification where your attention span and need for gratification become unmanageable”.
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On ‘What Do You Think About The Car?’, Declan was central to the narrative, it felt personal, an open chapter discussing his thoughts, fears, feelings and beliefs. He represented a concerned British youth worried about their future, offering them anthems to help articulate a time in their lives crucial to figuring out their own identities and beliefs. This time, on ‘Zeros’ he often escapes into different characters, but the weight of his social observations and perspective remains, but now applied to a wider humanity-sized scale.
“A very important thing for me is having moments that were purely created, even though they do give a sort of moral in the end, in hindsight the purpose is just to be creative with the ideas and be explorative”. Some of his favourite storytellers range from Lemony Snicket who he was “ripping off when I wanted to be an author”, to Patti Smith. But he also finds some of his favourite stories are from random people he meets, “I feel like the best storytellers are random people who you meet. I find myself taking ideas or taking influence just from random conversations or stories that are related to me”.
For Declan, stories are a necessity, “I think storytelling to me is so essential to humanity and is the basis of a lot of things we believe are real and hold symbol to the world. I’ve always felt it’s so central to who we are”.
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'Zeros' is out on September 4th.
Words: *Matthew Pywell*
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