Kevin McGowan is a Scottish singer-songwriter born in Stirling, Scotland. He is a multi-instrumentalist who writes, performs and produces all his own material. Kevin will be releasing the single “Hibernation Masturbation”, out through his own label ‘imagine & believe records’, on the 27th October 2016. He describes the track as “an analysis of the isolated world that we live in and how technology and the media have influenced our lives.” Hence the metaphoric title describing how ‘solitary’ we have become in our everyday pleasures and endeavors.
There are two things that make Kevin McGowan stand out in a crowd. First comes the music. His harmonic textures and rhythmic off-beating constantly combine to create a much needed breath of fresh air in this conveyor-belt pop world. I didn’t realize how tired I was of the same reworked mainstream songs until I listened to Kevin, and found his retro-flavored music so beautiful in its difference.
Though his style varies between alt-folk and alt-rock, it’s just that melodic Britpop twist, or the fact that Kevin started his performing life as a street-busker, but this type of song becomes alluringly hypnotic, with its confidently charismatic execution.
Second, his lyrics are extremely clever, current and very well crafted. This is not puerile popular music with lyrics that don’t mean anything important (or are already familiar because they say the exact same thing as every other pop band you’ve just listened to).
This is the first time that I have heard Kevin McGowan, but I’m of the opinion that he requires the listener to truly immerse himself in the music; special attention needs to be paid to all the subtleties, or else much of the beauty, both lyrically and musically can be lost.
Because of his DIY approach, many fans may be fooled to believe that they’ll be getting the more-often-than-not, shabby shoestring production. That is not the case as Kevin has put together not only a more than shiny production, but he has thoroughly fleshed out the song’s arrangement, and that is where the major difference with his contemporaries stand.
With all the technology at hand it’s easy to have a 40-piece orchestra in your bedroom, filling a 3 minute song with infinite layers of sound. The problem is most people don’t even know the simple difference between a verse, bridge and chorus let alone the remaining arranging subtleties.
Kevin understands music and is able to build an extremely pleasurable track, injecting it with all the little harmonious twists and turns necessary. The result is that you will be charmed senseless by this man’s melodic variance and vocal tone and range on “Hibernation Masturbation”.
His voice echoes the clarity and frailty as well as the growl and falsetto that the Beatles once so cleverly fused. And he accomplishes this without the pretense of a copy-cat. You just know Kevin McGowan’s for real…it’s just that you can’t believe that artists like him still exist in 2016!
OFFICIAL LINKS: PRE-ORDER ITUNES – PRE-ORDER VIA TEX MESSAGE UK, HB TO 85888
FACEBOOK – TWITTER – EMAIL: kevinmcgowan1970@aol.com
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