Review:'LEONARD, KIERAN AND THE HORSES' 'Underwood Milk (single)'
- Label: 'Fierce Panda Records'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '29th June 2015'
Our Rating:
Kieran Leonard is a British singer-songwriter who cultivates the Cobain-ish look of a rock and roll casualty and wears his cultural references on his sleeve.
For his debut album, he wrote a song called Harold Pinter Is Dead and the video for his first single, Hipster Jesus, was inspired by Andy Warhol's screen tests in that it consists entirely of the singer staring at the camera.
Leonard's sophomore album, recorded with a four piece band (The Horses) in the late Stanley Kubrick's house, will be Good Luck, Everybody and this taster single continues to identify him as an articulate, though slightly smug, smarty pants with the ability to write ear-catching lyrics.
"She is always up to something, she's got eyes like a shithouse rat" is one of the far from flattering descriptions on Underwood Milk; a folk song in essence but framed within a muddy alt-rock arrangement.
The B-side (if this were vinyl) is Holy Shit contains a stark summation of the human condition: "No-one ever really knows you and life is brief" coupled with equally unromantic observations like "Love is just an institution based on human frailty".
The deadpan delivery of such lines and his purposeful look give the impression that Leonard is an artist with a keen sense of what it takes to be a pop star in this cynical age of ours.
One of the knowing captions on the video for Underwood Milk is the question: "But will this tenuous visual motif hold up under the slightest critical scrutiny?"
Provided he keeps his head and is not entirely consumed by his own cleverness, I'd answer in the affirmative.
