Grapefruit
On his second album Oxford University student Kiran Leonard employs fragile folk, abrasive post-punk, math-rock polyrhythms and a body-image parable about a squid. And that’s all in one song: the epic, flighty “Pink Fruit”. Even if his overwrought vocal and naggingly melodic riffs suggest Jeff Buckley, everything else he conjures is impressively singular in abandon and ambition. Particularly enthralling is “Don’t Make Friends with Good People”, a Petri dish of noise-rock, afrobeat, chamber pop and throaty angst.
mostly recorded 2013-15 --- this is the noisy one with lots of guitars
Grapefruit is by turns astounding, accomplished and difficult to digest, an album shouldering ambitions so big that you fear that at any point it might give way at the knees.
Leonard's ability to make an album of this breath-taking scope barely out of his teenage years makes him one hell of a prospect.
Kiran Leonard's clattering songscapes describe a jumbled, dreamy, scatterbrained lack of concentration; he's best when he cuts straight to the bone.
Too many borrowed voices jostle on the magpie-minded art rocker’s second album. CD new music review by Kieron Tyler