Declan Mckenna - What Happened To The Beach Review
Mckenna’s third album takes us across all seasons and into all corners of the modern condition, marrying the perfect levels of personal and political so when we feel, we feel together.
Declan Mckenna’s third studio album marks a cornerstone in his musical identity: ‘it was the first time I’d been able to open up and unload’ he says of making the record, noting that he doesn’t ‘want to live out [his old] style forever’. After a four year break since the 2020 glam-rock record ‘Zeros’, ‘What Happened to the Beach?’ ushers in an expansive ebullience of growth, maturity, and experimentation with the perfect blend of politics, polished production and warbled, mercurial decadence.
Declan opens as he means to go on, with a ‘wobble’. He isn’t here to tease, kicking straight off with the titular question, ‘what happened to the beach?’. This opening functions as a pledge to the weird, wonky experimentation at the heart of this record. A song that simultaneously asks listener to think deeper, listen harder, but not take the whole thing too seriously: ‘I’m off to Tenerife, cuz life’s really changed me,’ he says half-satirically, but the truth is the Los Angeles sun, where Declan recorded the album, makes itself known in the major key. Zooming back to colder months, ‘Elevator Hum’ was released in December as the album’s third single, a warm hug in the depths of this winter, thawing out fingers in holey gloves with the promise of unyielding appreciation. Understated, but totally gorgeous.
Declan races from this heart-wrenching honesty (‘I want you to be free to be happy’, he pleas), to laugh-out-loud lyricism in fourth track, ‘I Write The News’, a song under three minutes, spliced into three sections. With one refrain we go from acoustic earnestness to a defective aestheticism calling back to his very first tunes, ‘Brew’ and ‘Basic (regurgitated)’. An enigmatic ‘Kensington dude’ casts a muscly silhouette over the playful tune. Some of Declan’s biggest hits pack a political punch; take viral-sensation ‘Brazil’ detailing the corruption of the World Cup, almost at half a billion listens on Spotify, or ‘British Bombs’ detailing the hypocritical British Arms Trade. His song-writing is as sparky as ever, eccentrically detailing the corrupt workings of society in this Bob Dylan-esque off-beat twittering.
Familiarity follows: Declan chants about ‘Sympathy’ above a slightly disconcerting brass placated by the balmy bass and drum-track as the song articulates truism after truism: ‘If you don’t speak your thoughts aloud, you just feel them forever’. Racing from sixties-influence to modern bedroom-pop, ‘Mulhollands Dinner and Wine’ is a masterclass in indie-pop, the best of the likes of Still Woozy, Remi Wolf and Easy Life fornicating to produce this irresistible summer anthem. I can hear it already, rinsed gleefully to a soggy cardboard cut-out of itself on Radio 1 as temperatures soar. Loose, free, surfer-chic. Leave it to Declan to satirise the audience he’s pandering to here: ‘‘I’ve got a boring apartment and all of the drugs, I’m fucking dangerous’.
Peculiar tune ‘‘Breath of Light’ buoys from the bottom of the previous beach-tune with cult-ish exhalations on a loop-track, excellently produced by Gianluca Buccellati, whose previous projects include Arlo Parks and Lana Del Ray. Declan picks up on the intergalactic themes present in ‘Zeros’ album, smirking ‘catch me at the centre of a cosmic light’. That’s just it - he defies predictive direction, plays ball far from the edges of the field. Watch the music videos for this album’s singles and you’ll see this wackiness in full force. Mystical, surreal, ahead of its time, or just weird? You decide.
‘Nothing Works’ is a tirade against the unhelpful interference of record labels and the like to the creative process. His Radio 1 live lounge cover of this tune in November 2023 was the first time a set had quaked the physical studio, each instrument at full force, driving a riotous cacophony, the form and style splitting at the seams. Next, ‘The Phantom Buzz (Kick In)’ comes rushing to provide something the record has missed so far: good old rock and roll. Though a more formulaic track, the riffs are foot-stompingly good and Declan’s vocal personality oozes into the track - a sure hit at all the festivals he’s set to appear at this summer. In ‘Honest Test’, Declan has proved he’s wearing the shoes, he’s running in the shoes, and now he’s kicking back in them. A great three-track run.
‘Mezzanine’ is an interesting take on abandonment and disassociation, usually captured sparsely, but here presented frantically and fanatically. Declan lets us muse on our human condition and uses this vulnerability to connect us in the following tear-jerker ‘It’s An Act’, a song made for walking around a city late at night, blinking at big city lights that twinkle from god knows where. This is the most honest work of his repertoire.
Finale ‘4 more years’ provides a cryptic, dramatic flourish for an ending - four more years until what? Of what? Does this have something to do with the beach, about living through climate catastrophe, or perhaps Declan’s personal journey in the industry? Is he predicting his own sell-by date? Some time ago, Declan was forced to explain his ‘hostile behaviour’ towards fans on Tik-Tok, appealing to our humanity; I’m just tired, he said, so tired. In four more years, will Declan be hanging up his hat? If so, we should start taking Declan Mckenna seriously, outside of his GCSE-music-track-turned-platinum-single ‘Brazil’. ‘What happened to the beach?’ takes us across all seasons and into all corners of the modern condition, marrying the perfect levels of personal and political so when we feel, we feel together. That’s all an album can hope to do.