Madeline Kenney

Putting a dreamy finish on textured indie rock, Bay Area-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Madeline Kenney makes music that can seem as much composition as song. Emerging with her first recordings in 2016, she went on to collaborate with Toro y Moi on albums by each of them, then developed a subtly expansive, experimental approach with Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner on 2018′s Perfect Shapes and 2020′s Sucker's Lunch. Both a pandemic and breakup album, 2023′s A New Reality Mind was at least as intricate as its predecessors, despite having been recorded by Kenney alone in her basement.
Born and raised in Seattle, Madeline Kenney started taking piano lessons at the age of five and later began writing songs. In her teens, she started working as a professional baker, meanwhile earning a degree in neuroscience before relocating to the Bay Area in 2014. Though she moved to pursue a career in baking, Kenney quickly took to the local arts community and became active in modern dance, painting, and, once again, songwriting. Finding work as a nanny and voice and piano teacher, she also started a small record label and learned engineering and production with help from the Women’s Audio Mission in San Francisco.
With production by Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bear and arrangements by Kenney, her first EP, Signals, arrived on Bear’s Company Records in 2016. She then appeared on Toro y Moi’s July 2017 album, Boo Boo, and Bear returned to produce Kenney’s full-length debut, Night Night at the First Landing. It was released on Company Records in September 2017.
With Kenney and newfound collaborator Jenn Wasner both playing multiple instruments on the album, her more explorative second long-player, 2018′s Perfect Shapes, was produced by Wasner and marked her debut for Carpark Records. Wasner returned to the studio with Kenney as well as Wye Oak bandmate Andy Stack for 2020′s Sucker's Lunch. Continuing in the vein of those record’s richly layered, reverb-heavy synth rock constructions, July 2023′s A New Reality Mind was nevertheless produced and recorded by Kenney alone in her basement. The product of early-COVID-19 pandemic isolation and a sudden breakup, its anxious inspirations were more apparent in the lyrics and electronic textures than in its dreamy, midtempo character. ~ Marcy Donelson