Sep 092012
I first came across the then-16 year old Archy Marshall via the video below, and it just blew me away with raw, choked-up emotion and Billy Bragg-like vocals coming out of this Dickensian Rick Astley urchin.
Working under the moniker Zoo Kid, this little snot-nosed wunderkind cranked out a batch of ’80s-tinged punky, jazzy, folky, rockabilly, dubby little ditties on his Bandcamp site. As a seasoned 17 year old, he changed to King Krule, but he continues to stay true to his aesthetic. Which is what? A thuggish Everything But The Girl? Paul Weller fronting a garage band? Joe Strummer meets Gang Starr? Amped Aztec Camera?
I want to slap this tone-deaf funky little hooligan on the back. You go, kid!
He looks cool and has a cool sound, but the two songs I listened to didn’t grab me.
Does this kid’s mom know he’s singing in that voice? He looks too innocent to sing in such a sleazy way.
Honestly, I like the atmospheric musical arrangements, but as I often feel about Billy Bragg he sounds like he’s putting on the “bloke-ishness” of his voice. In “Rock Bottom” he gets so bloke-ish that he almost slips into a patois. Really? It’s the English equivalent of what I sense in the hokey, over-the-top approach of an American artist like Randy Newman.
If he’d back off on that voice a touch I might dig his music more easily, the way I used to dig an album by The Jazz Butcher. (Whatever happened to that album anyway???)