Declan McKenna – ‘What Happened To The Beach?’ review: an exercise in pure, creative optimism 

An English artist fleeing London for LA, eschewing the late winter drizzle for golden sands and emerging with a sun-dappled record is no novel concept. Yet for a now 24-year-old Declan McKenna, this stateside period coincides with an era of personal growth and maturity. On his third album ‘What Happened To The Beach?’, he debuts a newfound penchant for looking inward for lyrical inspiration, rather than at the rusting, imperfect world around him. While his 2020 album ‘Zeros’ and widely acclaimed 2017 debut ‘What Do You Think About The Car?’ both dealt largely with politics, corruption and global warming, ‘What Happened to the Beach?’ sheds some of that responsibility, allowing anxiety to collapse and fade as luridly as the West Coast waves that permeate the songs.

However, opting for a rose-tinted approach to songwriting wasn’t a decision that was taken lightly, with McKenna citing therapy as key in helping him place joy as a lyrical muse in place of the heavier topics that punctuated his earlier albums. Working with Gianluca Buccellati, the producer behind Arlo Parks’ radiant debut ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’ and parts of Lana Del Rey’s beachy ‘Lust for Life’, this brighter outlook takes the form of a spacier, lighter sonic atmosphere where oddness is allowed to shine.

Some of the sharper lyrical wit that defined his earlier releases is abandoned – but McKenna is sure to state that it is intentional. On theatrical, ’60s pop-inspired lead single ‘Sympathy’ he ruminates the personal affirmation “You don’t need to be clever”. Freedom, then, is a theme that runs throughout, a precedent immediately set with album opener ‘Wobble’, as he establishes his new California-inflicted mindset: “I used to cry at home all night and now I’m out in the sunshine.”

Yet despite these West Coast notions, with tracks like ‘Mulholland’s Dinner and Wine’ dripping in woozy observations of LA life, it’s still an album heavily imbued with British identity. ‘I Write The News’ pokes fun at soaring London rents and “Kensington dudes”, while ‘Nothing Works’ takes aim at creativity-stifling music execs. It’s one of the album’s more pointed moments, tackling the absurdity of briefly being heralded as the music industry’s “fat cat kid” as a teenager. Here, he battles with the frustrations of attempting to grow as an artist amid a system that would rather him endlessly attempt to recreate the causes of his early success.

On ‘What Happened To The Beach?’, perfectionism is released to make space to revel in creativity, resulting in a truly joyful effort. Perhaps this newfound lightness will detach him from an early audience of disillusioned British teens sure to reject the notion that higher doses of Vitamin D can truly be the antidote to the pain and strife of modern living. Yet it’s not something McKenna seems concerned by. Here he’s no longer trying to speak for a generation – just for himself.

Details

• Release date: February 9, 2024
• Record label: Columbia

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