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Live Review: Kid Heron keeps an unrealised love alive with 'Future Love'

13 September 2018 | 10:15 am | Kyle Fensom

Kid Heron shares 'Future Love', the first single from his debut solo EP, a languid neo-soul meditation on a love that went unrealised.

Cairns-born, Sydney-based artist KID HERON has shared the first taste of his forthcoming debut solo EP, which is slated for release in early 2019, in the form of new single, ‘Future Love’. A lavish slice of neo-soul, ‘Future Love’ meditates on a very particular type of love, a love which went not exactly unrequited so much as it went unrealised, with two intertwined souls trying but failing to reach their logical end and a love sentenced to languish in the realm of what-ifs.  

Of the track, Kid Heron explains that he “was deeply inspired by ERYKAH BADU’s ‘Next Lifetime’, which for me lives in the same universe as ‘Future Love’; the right place, but the wrong time. Delving into the idea that two people can be so truly connected, yet miss their moment”. ‘Future Love’ locates this moment and presses pause, meandering through the tension of all the possibilities coexisting together, suspended in that moment. It’s a tension which Kid Heron likens to “watching a meteor skim the earth’s atmosphere when you really kind of want it to fuck that shit up and explode”.

[embed]https://soundcloud.com/kidheron/futurelove/s-5D79z[/embed]

But this is hardly what ‘Future Love’ sounds like. Instead, it’s a sumptuous, languorous slow jam that reconciles feelings of regret with the pangs of lost love, the bliss of acceptance with the contemplation of what could’ve been and taps into the awkward, floundering growing pains of adolescent affection. The Erykah Badu reference is apt, however, as it feels fundamentally indebted to the neo-soul and quiet storm stylings of the 1990s, but the haziness of its production also brings to mind more contemporary alt-R&B acts like HOW TO DRESS WELL or SERPENTWITHFEET. As it wanders through this moment, ‘Future Love’ seems content to takes its time - perhaps because Kid Heron knows this is the only space in which that love comes alive again. Opening with the sounds of birds chirping and water running, the track unravels in languid movements, it’s pillowy synths, meandering guitar lines and Kid Heron’s husky harmonies evoking the drawn-out humidity of a late summer afternoon.

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The love that Kid Heron sings about on ‘Future Love’ might’ve succumbed to the weight of its moment, but with here he’s able to still hold it in that moment, where an entire future of possibilities was still open, and he brings it back to life, even if only for four minutes.

IMAGE: Jack Saltmiras

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