Zeros Declan McKenna

• 1You Better Believe!!!04:53
• 2Be an Astronaut04:35
• 3The Key to Life on Earth04:07
• 4Beautiful Faces03:17
• 5Daniel, You're Still a Child03:58
• 6Emily04:12
• 7Twice Your Size03:19
• 8Rapture03:59
• 9Sagittarius A*03:57
• 10Eventually, Darling04:12
• Total Runtime40:29

Info for Zeros

Zeros is the second studio album from Declan McKenna. Produced by Jay Joyce, the album features "Beautiful Faces."

Declan McKenna’s second album Zeros will be released on September 4th. The album, produced by Jay Joyce with mixing by Spike Stent, was recorded in Nashville and is his first since his critically acclaimed debut, 2017’s What Do You Think About The Car?, which NPR Music hailed as “a powerful, clever album” and lead Rolling Stone to name him an “Artist You Need to Know.” Said McKenna about Zeros: “In terms of my artistic development, it feels a major step on from my first record. With this album, if I’m performing as a character, I wanted it to give it everything- all the artists that I love like Dylan, Nick Cave or Bowie, are great storytellers because they give their characters really intense, sometimes strange voices.”

For Zeros, 21-year-old Mckenna decamped from his native London to Nashville, wanting to be away from the familiarity and consistency of home. He wrote all the music for the album himself and was backed on it by his long-time band consisting of Isabel Torres (guitarist), Nathan Cox (bassist), William Bishop (keys) and Gabrielle Marie King (drummer). Like Nashville, the album is playful, wonderfully strange and intensely musical, and the themes and McKenna’s concerns are familiar, if evolved. There is the anxiety and disconnection of an entire generation born into a mess they did not create, as well as their alienation from a world where there seem to be multiple realities: social media, fake news, post-truth.

Opening track, “You Better Believe!!!” combines a retro, 70s space-race inspired energy with a modern tale of anxiety. Musically and lyrically, it provides a perfect blueprint to the album. Throughout the album, McKenna manages to encapsulate both a very human psyche and a more absurd, dystopian future, whether it’s the tongue in cheek “Be An Astronaut” (‘We’re gonna get ourselves killed/ What do you think about the rocket I built?’) or the more harrowing “Twice Your Size,” (“The Sun will melt what it can touch… / And wouldn’t that be so nice/ listen to the man online for his good advice/ cut your hair cause it’s full of lies.”). The songs, while they stand as a reflection of our own culture, are also the warped carnival mirror- funny, bizarre, otherworldly but always close enough to see a familiar face staring back.

Ultimately Zeros is a world-building, not destroying, album. The unshakeable confidence and boldness of McKenna’s voice, as well as the stories he tells, are reinforced by the empathy and compassion with which he tells them. The “wisdom beyond his years” label McKenna’s often charged with stems from this as well: his recognition that as diverse as his generation is, their struggles with the modern world are similar, and that as disquieting and absurd as these experiences might feel, no one is in it alone.

“English singer-songwriter Declan McKenna has been churning out one jam after another.” (Billboard)

“There isn’t anyone who sounds quite like McKenna. He’s been joyfully singing along to the sound of his own strange and fantastic drum from the very start of his career.” (Flaunt)

“McKenna has built an activist-centric body of work exploring religion, gender identity and other thorny political topics." (Rolling Stone)

Declan McKenna, vocals

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