In his teens, Declan McKenna was dubbed a young Bob Dylan owing to his political pop. Brazil, a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, dealt with corruption in Fifa, while other songs addressed transgender issues, police brutality and voting rights.
Now 25, the Hertfordshire-bred boy wonder looks more like a young Paul McCartney. His once messy hair has been replaced by a moptop, while at this Edinburgh Festival show, his outfit of patterned polyester shirt and too-short brown slacks smacked of the 1970s.
McKenna has cited McCartney’s 1971 solo album Ram as a sonic inspiration for his third album, What Happened to the Beach?, released earlier this year. But it was the screaming young women at a packed Playhouse, where both balconies bounced and the security had a hectic night escorting fans who had snuck to the front back to their seats, that gave the gig an air of Beatlemania.
How did this happen to the socially awkward yet social-media-savvy McKenna? TikTok, of course. In 2022, Brazil exploded on the platform and has stuck there since. Several of McKenna’s other songs have followed suit. Here, almost the entire setlist was howled back from the audience word for word — from the seven-year-old mid-tempo beauty The Kids Don’t Wanna Come Home to woozy newbies Wobble and Mulholland’s Dinner and Wine.
Accompanied by a four-piece band scattered between giant, iceberg-like props on to which psychedelic lights were projected, McKenna arrived on stage surveying an audience already on its feet, through opera glasses, which he then kept in his pocket and whipped out later on. During Breath of Light, he stepped off stage to mingle with fans and was so mobbed that he was knocked off his feet while still playing guitar.
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Technical issues for his guitarist left McKenna a little stranded several times in the show’s second half. “I have no jokes and I’m not that comfortable saying much,” he mumbled, as two technicians crawled around the floor fiddling with cables. Still, he posed up a storm and passed time by crouching down to have his moptop pawed.
A bombastic Brazil or a magical Listen to Your Friends, which had a Taylor Swift-style spoken interlude, might have been the highlight were it not for a surprise live debut — a stripped-back cover of Abba’s Slipping Through My Fingers, which he released unofficially last year, and which sent fans into a frenzy.
The fact that it followed his announcement that the gig marked “the end of an era — our last night of touring this album” made it all the more poignant. McKenna’s next step? Supporting the all-conquering Sabrina Carpenter in the States. He could return home a superstar.
★★★★☆
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