Recorded in London and Stockport with saxophonist Ignacio Salvadores and co-producer Dilip Harris, Man Alive! was made, like its predecessors, by night. But now, the mellow scent of change is in the air.
Marshall has always remained distant, an approach he adopted while dabbling in misdemeanours as a teen as he shuttled between his parents’ separate houses. Pitchfork even ran a news story about his impending fatherhood. Each new morsel, sonic or visual, still brings a blizzard of attention. Photograph: Reuben Bastienne-LewisĮven so, his every move fascinates. The former Brit School pupil was always confident he would do well, but he has tried to foster a low-key approach, shunning the limelight in favour of pints, roll-ups and splurges of restless creativity. He says some fans have been sharing their emotional connections with him for as long as he’s been releasing music. Marshall’s skin-pricking, red-raw songs have always affected people. “Those juxtapositions between death and such extreme life must have had an effect on me.”Īs much as this reclusive character might not favour the idea, for King Krule fans the new outlook represents big news. “When she was born, she was the biggest expression of life and love, but I also lost some good people last year,” he says.
He scratches his head as if to crank its contents into gear. Upon his return to London Marshall found out he was becoming a father the baby was born in March last year. He remembers that period as “a really inspiring time”, and things would change dramatically once it was over. After one riotous gig in Bermondsey before The Ooz came out, he left to tour the US. All the while, he drank in the same pubs and did his bit to promote the scene he came from, supporting south London music and ensuring that its bars and DIY venues still hosted King Krule shows. The hype spread internationally as Marshall toured, and in 2017, his expansive second King Krule album The Ooz won him a Mercury nod, by which time he had become something of a counterculture icon. In 2014, under his real name, he released A New Place 2 Drown, a tripped-out LP that came with a companion art book made with his brother. Marshall, meanwhile, told MTV he “wasn’t surprised” Beyoncé was into his stuff. Beyoncé posted a link to Easy Easy (a bellowed rock’n’roll number about nicking stuff from Tesco in Surrey Quays) on Facebook, and Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Earl Sweatshirt began sniffing around for collaborations. Tracks such as Border Line and Ceiling had plenty of the former, while Baby Blue and Ocean Bed showed his deft touch for a love song. Bile and brilliance spewed from his lean frame in equal measure. That debut single sparked pandemonium, and after a self-titled EP laid out his untamable vision for a new sound built from jazz, hip-hop, punk and his beloved no-wave, 2013 debut album 6 Feet Beneath the Moon cemented him as a thrilling new voice. “I was super cold in front of that power station – I remember after five or six takes I was like: ‘Fucking hell, my fingers are falling off.’” His girlfriend – photographer Charlotte Patmore, who was heavily pregnant during parts of the recording – was behind the camera. Along with footage of four new songs were shots of snow, the moon and copious electricity pylons (Marshall’s current fixation). The story behind the trip to the power station became clear before Christmas, when Marshall uploaded a grainy video titled Hey World! to YouTube. It is another cold evening, and he is in London rehearsing in preparation to tour Man Alive!, his third album as King Krule. “I left this city and went up there and it feels great,” he says as we settle at a table in the pub near his mum’s house back south, to the west of Peckham Rye. What on earth was the flame-haired singer up to, miles from his south London home, his Fender Mustang hanging loosely over his shoulder? As it turns out, Marshall has a new stomping ground these days, having moved to the north-west after his partner became pregnant in 2018, to be closer to her family. With the sun setting over its chimneys, he picked out drowsy notes on his guitar, singing deeply over the top.
Behind him, smoke curled into the wintry sky above Fiddlers Ferry power station. S ome time towards the end of 2019, Archy Marshall, AKA King Krule, found himself in Warrington standing on a wide stretch of ankle-high grass.
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