OXFORD: Common Ground

Sunday 12th May, 2024

7:15pm

Event information

Kiran Leonard is back in Oxford and with a new band of musicians after his stonking show at Florence Park Community Centre in 2022. Lobby coming up from London to play too - feat. members of leather.head and Goat Girl.

Kiran Leonard’s unique and ambitious body of work spans more than a decade of releases on labels such as Moshi Moshi and Hand of Glory, limited-run noisy DIY fare, and everything in between. The adolescent guitar/chamber prog of early records such as ‘Bowler Hat Soup’ (2013) and ‘Grapefruit’ (2016) earned praise from Pitchfork, the Guardian and the Quietus, and produced several BBC 6Music-playlisted singles. More recent work has seen Kiran attempt to synthesise interests in situated/home recording, collage, his live practice, and a combination of songcraft with graphic scores, as documented on the monumental (i.e. two-hour-long) and abstract ‘Trespass on Foot’ (2021) and ‘River Holds Peace, Some Live’ (2023), a collection of new and old material arranged for an ensemble of multiple electric guitars, cittern and double bass.

Returning this year after half a decade of songs without choruses at the ripe old age of 28, Kiran will release new album ‘Real Home’ on 17th April via Memorials of Distinction. Preceded by two singles, ‘Treat Me a Stranger’ (a 44-second country-tinged ode to domesticity and the Singing Brakeman himself, Jimmie Rodgers) and ‘My Love, Let’s Take the Stage Tonight’ (a more standard-length three-minute quote “guitar pop banger”), ‘Real Home’ is the most concise and well-honed summary so far of his multivalent oeuvre (in other words, it’s his best!) Following a sold-out show at Windmill Brixton in early March, he will be supporting the album’s release with a short UK tour in May, with a new band featuring members of caroline, Shovel Dance Collective, and Historically Fucked.

37-38 Little Clarendon St
Oxford
OX1 2HU

www.commonground-oxford.com/