Keaton Henson

A singer, songwriter, composer, and illustrator, Keaton Henson’s eclectic music career has spanned aching singer/songwriter fare, experimental electronic music, indie rock, and orchestral works. After his 2010 debut album, Dear, drew comparisons to such luminaries as Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, and Bon Iver, he employed full-band arrangements on 2013′s Birthdays before adopting the alias Behaving for forays into electronic music. He scored his first film, Something Better to Come, in 2014. Henson made it into the Top 20 of Billboard’s Heatseekers chart with 2016′s Kindly Now, a mix of sparse singer/songwriter material and lusher chamber pop. Instead of sticking with popular formula, he followed that with 2019′s Six Lethargies, an instrumental work for string orchestra that explored themes of mental illness. The next year’s Monument marked a return to thoughtful indie rock as well as themes of illness. In one of his more surprising turns yet, 2023′s House Party embraced a hooky, full-band indie pop/rock involving a rock-star alter ego. Henson himself rarely performs live due to chronic anxiety.
Born in London in 1988 to actor Nicky Henson and ballerina Marguerite Porter (of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal Ballet, respectively), Henson began his career in music as an illustrator, designing album artwork for the likes of Enter Shikari and Dananananaykroyd. Though he worked on music of his own, he didn’t intend it for public consumption. When he eventually did upload an album, the intimate Dear, in 2010, it found a sizable audience by way of word of mouth and blogs. This drew the interest of Sony, which reissued the record in 2012.
With his anxiety extending to deep-set stage fright, Henson went to great lengths to find ways other than conventional touring to help promote his music. For his single “Charon,” he hosted an exhibition in East London entitled Gloaming — also the name of a graphic novel he’d written. The three-day installation allowed fans to enter one at a time and poke their head through a window, where he would play a song one-on-one. He later embarked on limited tours that saw him play to larger audiences, yet in small, atypical spaces such as museums, art galleries, and churches.
Henson’s more expansive sophomore outing, Birthdays, arrived in 2013 on Oak Ten Records and Anti-. A year later, the songwriter released an album of instrumentals called Romantic Works, featuring cellist Ren Ford. His first film score, for the documentary Something Better to Come, premiered in 2014. His next project was a mix of electronics and experimental sound editing, which he issued under the alias Behaving in 2015. That same year, Henson published a limited-edition piano songbook/“visual memoir” with a set of eight previously unreleased songs called 5 Years.
His sixth studio album and fourth to feature his own cover illustration, Kindly Now (Oak Ten, PIAS) saw release in September 2016. It reached the Top 20 of Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and spent a week on the album chart in the Netherlands. Following a world premiere in London by Britten Sinfonia, the instrumental album Six Lethargies arrived on Decca imprint Mercury KX in 2019. Henson then returned to songwriting, issuing the emotionally raw Monument in 2020. Addressing his father’s long struggle with illness, it featured performances by Radiohead’s Philip Selway (drums, percussion), composer Charlotte Harding (saxophones), and composer/producer Leo Abrahams (guitar). That year also saw the release of the dementia-themed film drama Supernova, featuring a score by Henson. He also composed the music for the 2021 AMC+ miniseries Anne Boleyn.
Henson had married and moved from London to the Sussex countryside by the time he conceptualized his next solo album as a more melodic, upbeat one incorporating an alter ego. Taking inspiration from albums by Big Star, the Replacements, and the Only Ones, among others, House Party was issued on PIAS in June 2023. Produced by Luke Smith (Depeche Mode, Foals) and Fiona Cruickshank (Paul Weller, Dot Allison), its backing band included guitarist “Little” Barrie Cadogan (Primal Scream, Edwyn Collins), bassist Harry Deacon (Kid Wave, Palace), and drummer Matt Ingram (Laura Marling, Florence + the Machine). ~ Marcy Donelson & Scott Kerr