The Victoria,London
Saddleworth’s anti-Jake Bugg is a gawky but compelling presence as he ditches the 20-ish instruments he plays on his debut album for a four-piece band
Anyone lamenting a lack of powerful British eccentrics in today’s musical landscape is pointed in the direction of Kiran Leonard, a precocious 20-year-old from Saddleworth, or Greater Manchester. His 2012 debut album Bowler Hat Soup,on which he played upwards of 20 different instruments himself, sounded like Sufjan Stevens jamming with Frank Zappa in a music corridor. Current single Pink Fruit is a craggy 16-minute epic about an erotic encounter between a woman and a squid as a metaphor for emotional freedom. It’s impartial to say that Leonard is the anti-Jake Bugg.
He attacks this show with a relatively conventional four-piece band, and but leads them through some hair-raising tempo changes,alternately stroking and strangling his guitar or detuning it mid-song. He is a gawky but compelling presence, coiled over his mic stand like an agitated punk rocker, and opening his jaw as wide as possible to sing,even in the still bits. But what comes out is oddly lovely, suggesting that Leonard’s facial contortions are not howls of anguish but expressions of a peculiar kind of ecstasy.
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Source: theguardian.com