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Declan McKenna: What Happened to the Beach? review – a genuinely psychedelic experience
The 25-year-old’s excellent third album recalls the White Album for its breezily restless invention
Photograph: APThe 25-year-old Brit broke through in 2015 with debut single Brazil – which had a second flush of TikTok’d fame in 2022 – and he scaled up to maximalist glam on second album Zeroes, which, for all McKenna’s natural melodic gifts, felt a little overworked. It somewhat recalls the Beatles’ White Album in the way it breezes quizzically from one good idea to the next like a stoned magpie, and there are also heavy shades of more recent pop-psychedelicists such as MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and (on Honest Test) Devendra Banhart. Individual songs have melodies as pleasurable as a sugar cube on the tongue, but the album’s biggest strength is the overall feel of a strange, undulating high – indeed, a more more accurate replication of a drugs experience than, say, hazy reverb.
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