'Was he being ironic?': King Creosote at the Albert Halls
'Was he being ironic?' the woman beside me asked. You could understand her uncertainty. After an hour of ringing, at times joyous music interspersed with comic grumbling and daft anecdotes, Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote,had just returned to the stage to get some things off his chest.
'These views are purely my own. They do not reflect anyone else, probably in the room … They're just mine. I'm just having a go at things,' he told us before launching into a song he's been working on since 2021, entitled Cattle, Sheep, Chickens, a slightly scattershot lyric that did suggest he was worried about fluoride in the water and 15-minute cities and in which he told us that he'd been called a tree-hugger, a far right anti-vaxxer and a conspiracy theorist in a tin foil hat.
And then came Dare I Hope I'm One of the Good Guys, a list-style song that rattled through a number of, shall we say, 'controversial' characters, all of whom Anderson seemed to suggest qualified for the epithet. They ranged from Van Morrison and JK Rowling to Right Said Fred and Eric Clapton. But it may have been the mentions for Mel Gibson, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson and Neil Oliver - 'one of the best guys' - that had my gig neighbour scratching her head.
These days Anderson is still living in the East Neuk, but largely offline and off the grid. He's only using paper money and at last year's Celtic Connections he finished his performance by railing against globalisation.
Clear then that he is, as they say, on something of a journey.
He spent much of this evening jokily telling us he was keeping his lip buttoned or telling daft anecdotes that, he hoped, wouldn't get him 'cancelled'.
Set aside the fact that criticism is not cancellation, where does this leave us?
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At the end of a very rum evening, I guess, a head-scratching mixture of beauty and bewilderment, starting early with the support act from Keny 'KY-10' Drew on modular synth. He was accompanied by Des Lawson on Korg and UDO keyboards, with Anderson himself 'messing around at the back.'
The result was 30 minutes of largely instrumental music (with some jellyfish-flavoured sci-fi voiceover) that had a lovely bubbling warmth to it. Pushing buttons and knobs, Anderson had to put his glasses on just to see what he was doing. A rather sweet human detail. I know the feeling.
But, really, if you've come to see King Creosote it's because you want to hear him sing. And so the main part of the evening saw Anderson, Lawson and Drew (this time on visuals) reassemble to jump back and forth through the extensive King Creosote back catalogue, starting with Aurora Boring Alias - one of the tracks he recorded with Jon Hopkins for the Honest Words EP in 2011 - before jumping back to 2000 and Something Beginning With D.
Does Anderson himself want to hear himself sing, I did wonder at times? There were moments when he stepped back from the mic, his vocal becoming a slightly muted texture in the mix. As a result Blue Marbled Elm Trees, one of the most beautiful songs on his last album I DES, doesn't quite hit home as hard as it should.
But when he comes in close - on tracks like Kirby Grips, an absolutely transcendent My Favourite Girl and Bats in the Attic, the final song of the set - you fully hear the yearn and ache of that glorious keening voice. At those points the night reached for the stars.
And then the encore. The Stirling audience received it politely. Maybe they were all wondering if these songs were ironic too.
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