King Creosote – I DES

With a tombstone on the cover and a title that's an anagram of ‘dies’, one might be mistaken for believing that the latest release from Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, might be something of a gloomy rumination on life, death and fleeting mortality. However, while I DES is undoubtedly an album that reckons with these themes, such a description does not even begin to do justice to the soaring euphoria with which Anderson has infused in almost every track. 

‘No I shan’t complain / I had the best life laughing with my girls’, Anderson asserts in Blue Marbled Elm Trees, an uplifting whirlwind of a song, and the unequivocal high point of the album. It's a track that reflects upon the joys of a fleeting time on this blue marble we call Earth in, as none do so successfully as the self-proclaimed ‘Fifer-for-lifer,’ a curiously and quintessentially Scottish way. Other standouts are the discomfitingly romantic Burial Bleak, which is anything but bleak, and the softly melancholic Walter de la Nightmare.

Overall, I DES is a largely jubilant and life-affirming meditation on life and mortality. A triumph for Anderson, it's a more than worthy addition to his extensive and revered body of work; after over a hundred albums, his reign as king is as secure as ever.

Listen to: Blue Marbled Elm Trees, Burial Bleak, Walter de la Nightmare