KEATON HENSON DOESN'T OWE YOU SADNESS

I thought I might have a second to myself after getting off the train Pulling up somewhere in Sussex, I won’t act like I wasn’t nervous. I seemed to sleepwalk myself there, almost laughing to myself at the ridiculousness of it all as me, and the 13-year-old version still inside me, set off to go meet Keaton Henson. It seemed silly – no one gets to meet Keaton, he’s a recluse, he’s a mystery, he lives in some castle on some hill in the middle of nowhere and does nothing but write songs and cry I worried he’d say little to nothing, terrified my few questions would be beneath him or I’d upset him or some other disaster They say don’t meet your heroes and when I think about the framed print of his poem, Grow Up With Me, sat on my childhood room wall; I thought I might have a second to prepare myself for the death of the figure I admired, before I met the real person.

Gaining notoriety as the poet laureate of the dark, angsty side of 2010s Tumblr –Keaton Henson was basically crowned king of the sad boys With the release of Dear and the start of a career dogged with anxiety, meaning he rarely played live or did interviews - he was the poster boy for the tortured artist. Leaving the station to glorious sunshine , finding Keaton leaning against a wall, in a graphic t-shirt and sunglasses, smiling at me; he was better than I expected.

“You can’t live your life as that twodimensional projection, because then that three-dimensional you underneath just withers away” he says with the same articulation you find in his lyrics. Sat by the fire after a day of draping pink tinsel in every corner of his house and joking about just how regularly he seems to find himself having to not flinch while someone fire a party popper at him – I meet Keaton Henson the person, and he’s as wise as you might expect and funnier than you probably imagine “I’ve met fans where I can see it in their eyes that they’re disappointed if I’m making jokes or I’m in a good place To see that disappointment always makes me feel guilty, as though I’ve lied to somebody – I haven’t, there’s just different parts of me.”

“When I was young and got started in the music industry, a friend could see that I was panicking And she said, ‘ you need to create an icon and a shield’. And it stuck with me. Never lie to people and create a fictional person, but like find the part of yourself that you ' re willing to expand to be. And so for me, I think that was like, I have an excess of sadness so here, have that But there are other parts of my personality I just keep for myself.” When it comes to House Party, his 6th studio album, he describes the switch plainly; “There's already a two-dimensional version of me. So why don't I just like, try a different one?”

From start to finish, it’s this thought that House Party is interested in. Considering the trappings of success, and the tough price to pay when that success is achieved through emotional vulnerability; House Party delves deep into the tortured artist trope.

It considers if Keaton is willing to bleed himself emotionally dry for fans, contemplates how dark that could have gotten and culminates in ‘The Mine’, as the voice of the album rocks back and forth crying “they love me”. And while Keaton has previously handed his sadness over to fans willingly, House Party wonders if he can afford that anymore, singing “I hold myself to ransom / And can’t afford the fee”.

But while the considerations here are different and wrapped up in a bright, colourful cover that stands out from anything that came before, there’s something almost eerily familiar. Reminiscent of 2013’s birthdays, when i point out the similarities between aesthetic, Keaton nods That’s the moment these two figures splinter; Keaton himself, and the voice of House Party

“I moved to LA for a while to make Birthdays and then I ran away. I think he ran to it and changed to be more like it I think that’s where the pink suit comes in, it feels very 70s LA, like he’s wearing what he thinks someone in LA should wear, he’s dressing like an extrovert ” The ‘He’ in question is the narrator of House Party, a somewhat alter-ego of Keaton’s that continued down a timeline he fled.

“Around Birthdays is when I suppose I started to feel the pressure to be more radio friendly, but I did the opposite and hid and made a classical record and went on to make a lot of long, weird albums. I think he tried to do everything he could to be that person, you know, making everything shorter, playing drums ” It's this ‘he’ you heard in the instrumental of album opener ‘I’m Not There’, a song that could be plunked straight from the soundtrack of some 90s indie flick, with catchy hooks and a sound we ' ve never heard from Keaton before –one that could make you dance. “There are all these points in my career where I backed away, so I imagined a version of myself that walked toward it all.”

And while you could dumb this figure down to a fame-hungry, hollow nemesis; the bad to Keaton’s good, it isn’t that simple. In a subtle contrast to Keaton’s outright sad image of earlier albums, in conversation about this new figure he references Marcel The Mime’s Mask Maker routine, trying on different faces for the crowd. “He puts one on and it s like this huge smile and then the rest of the performance is him trying to take it off and he can’t So for like seven minutes, he doesn't stop smiling but you can see the panic from his body language ” It’s this panic you hear on tracks, hidden under the fun instrumental, in the signature poetic lyricism that made Keaton a cult star and the sadness that people have come to expect of him. Writing about the trappings of the tortured artist and the stunting nature of success, he puts it plainly: "Don't envy what you wouldn t wanna be each day."

Referencing Bob Seger’s ‘Night Moves’ as another initial inspiration, discussing his obsession with a subtle lyrical change from “workin’ on our night moves” to a more sombre “ain’t it funny how the night moves?”, these moments of duality proved empowering – pop music can still be poetic. Recently doing a series of covers from Taylor Swift to Backstreet Boys, the decision took some fans by surprise, but this is Keaton’s taste shining through as the 3D multi-faceted person he is; “the music I make isn’t really the music I listen to. I love pop music, especially when people sneak something existential and deep into it”.

“I think I’ve genuinely squashed so many pop songs in my life. I realised that I wanted to free myself to make that more radio-friendly and poppier sound I ran from and free myself to not be afraid of doing that. But I felt like I needed an excuse and I thought the best excuse would be to do my own mime routine, use the sound of that American bravado music representing like the mask or the persona that this person is projected, where under it all they're actually really unhappy ”

But as we sit and chat, it’s hard to accept his figure as a wholly tragic one Doing his first interviews in years and preparing for his first live dates in even longer, Keaton seems renewed with a new confidence or at least a fresh burst of bravery. “He’s like a shield. I feel like I can hide behind him slightly, and I also think he’s made me realise how okay I am. ”

Thinking back to his previous point about creating an icon of yourself, and the Keaton I thought I might step off the train to find; I’m thankful to have found something different In the glorious sunshine of an unseasonably hot May, Keaton Henson doesn’t look strange in summer He moves through his new garden with ease, crouched in the long grass with our photographer Ele as she points out where it looks like he has wild garlic growing and he talks sweetly about his wife’s love of gardening. My heart sinks when I think about him feeling guilty in the face of his own happiness, that at one point his art became a kind of cage where certain fans stand guard demanding misery, forbidding recovery. As poster boy of the trope back in 2010, upon another listen, House Party feels like an album about the trappings of the tortured artist and how success won by vulnerability and brutal honesty can be stunting when you feel better. In the same way that fans seemed outraged that Lorde wasn’t still 17 and angsty on her latest album Solar Power, demanding depression from your favourite artist is so cruel to the person under it all And as Keaton laughs about it in the garden, pointing out how weird it would be to meet a 30-something year old man that still behaves like a teenager and hides away in his house staying up smoking and writing all night – I’m so relieved I didn’t have to try and interview that man.

Instead, Keaton Henson is a man that picks a Twix out of a box of celebrations. In his new home, one day after getting the keys, he’s already hung a skull and a Victorian photo In his car, his CD collection is a mix of 2010s indie and Mitski, in the boot there’s an old easel and an axe. In a secluded home about 20 minute drive from anything, he wears a pink suit as we joke about how he’ll fit in with the new farming community he’s landed in and how he’ll turn the basement dungeon into a studio (it has no windows, no light, he jokes he’ll make his best work here)

WORDS: JAMES KILKENNY

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