Declan Mckenna Album ZEROS Postponed Until August 21st

Declan McKenna's second album Zeros has been postponed until August 21st. The album and a planned U.S. tour have been pushed back due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, as well as travel restrictions put in place to halt its spread. Said Declan about the need for the delay:

Hope you're well in these really strange times, as you'll understand the current situation has brought many corners of the music industry to a stand still, and I'm sure many of you are expecting me to come out and talk about how this is gonna affect my plans for this year. I know this will be disappointing for many of you but I have to announce that I am postponing the release of Zeros until August the 21st, and (as many of you already figured out) cancelling my European dates in April. I am going to be playing more shows later in the year and beyond so I can still see all those who had tickets and all who did not but in these uncertain times it's going to take a second to know when works. Touring at the minute is not only unsafe but effectively impossible, plans we had in the coming months for America, Europe, many of our festival dates and our record store shows are now not going to happen in the lead up to the album. This is not a decision I take lightly - I recorded this album in August last year, and for it to have taken a whole year to get out to the world is pretty jarring for me, but these times are exceptional and there is very little space to make this happen the way I want it to within them. On the lighter side this does not mean I am stopping until August, there are a fair few more tracks to come before then, and fortunately I was able to work on some incredibly exciting other projects before the situation had escalated so greatly in the UK. So there will be more, but things are different for the time being and I'll have to take a minute to adjust to figure out absolutely every piece of the puzzle. If you have any question's or just wanna hear me play some tunes I'll be on Instagram live tomorrow (Weds) at 8pm GMT. Stay safe, and where possible, stay the f home xx

Zeros, produced by Jay Joyce with mixing by Spike Stent, was recorded in Nashville and is his first since his critically acclaimed debut, 2017's What Do You Think About The Car?, which NPR Music hailed as "a powerful, clever album" and lead Rolling Stone to name him an "Artist You Need to Know." Said McKenna about Zeros: "In terms of my artistic development, it feels a major step on from my first record. With this album, if I'm performing as a character, I wanted it to give it everything- all the artists that I love like Dylan, Nick Cave or Bowie, are great storytellers because they give their characters really intense, sometimes strange voices." Declan McKenna's Zeros is available for pre-order on all formats here.

McKenna recently shared the first single from Zeros, "Beautiful Faces." The song and video, directed by Will Hopper (Idles, Slaves, Marika Hackman), are emblematic of the album, and blur reality with the virtual façade which overlays it. "Beautiful Faces" is currently Top 25 at Alternative and Top 20 at AAA both at Mediabase after seven weeks. Additionally, the song is on BBC's Radio 1 A list for its third week. Watch the music video for "Beautiful Faces" here.

For Zeros, 21-year-old Mckenna decamped from his native London to Nashville, wanting to be away from the familiarity and consistency of home. He wrote all the music for the album himself and was backed on it by his long-time band. Like Nashville, the album is playful, wonderfully strange and intensely musical, and the themes and McKenna's concerns are familiar, if evolved. There is the anxiety and disconnection of an entire generation born into a mess they did not create, as well as their alienation from a world where there seem to be multiple realities: social media, fake news, post-truth.

Ultimately Zeros is a world-building, not destroying, album. The unshakeable confidence and boldness of McKenna's voice, as well as the stories he tells, are reinforced by the empathy and compassion with which he tells them. The "wisdom beyond his years" label McKenna's often charged with stems from this as well: his recognition that as diverse as his generation is, their struggles with the modern world are similar, and that as disquieting and absurd as these experiences might feel, no one is in it alone.

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