Photos: Daniel Pickard Releases Debut Album BEHAVIOUR

Indie pop artist Daniel Pickard has released his debut album, Behaviour, out now independently via AWAL. After singles 'Heartbeats the Flaw' and 'Nominee' previewed the record, the full album is now available, alongside Pickard's latest single, 'Room Service,' which he describes as his most cinematic and pointed track yet.

'Room Service' features lush strings arrangements, guitars, and an atmospheric synth core. Pick apart the lyrics, however, and the song transforms into a dark fantasy that both crushes and indulges in the hedonism of stardom, imagining the best and worst of the music industry mingling at an afterparty.

'I'm not talking about a specific experience,' explains Pickard. 'I'm just imagining I'm surrounded by everyone who disturbs me and makes me feel awful.' He adds: 'I'm joking, but I'm imagining I'm killing them all.'

'Room Service' is accompanied by a visualizer featuring a scenic, late night bike ride through East London, with Pickard stuck on center frame. 'It's shot on a famous East London strip between the areas known as Stoke Newington and Dalston,' he adds. As the buildings blur behind him, he subtly nods to symbols that represent him and peers. 'The Rochester Castle is a Wetherspoons pub I used to frequent, as did most of the millennial East London music scene. The Rio Cinema is also a hotspot, and my smiling as I ride past the establishment called 'Survivor' is pure coincidence and also something I'm most pleased of.'

On 18 November, Daniel Pickard will be one of the first artists performing a headline set at East London's Altar, a brand new independent venue nestled in a stylish bar and record shop in Leytonstone. He'll be playing with Lister Rider Home. Tickets are available.

Last month, Pickard offered the glistening, hooky single 'Nominee.' Highlighted in The Needle Drop and The Line of Best Fit, the track muses on decadence, pleasure, and power as a young man comes of age, with a Ben Poulton-directed visualizer that takes on the form of a headless, retro karaoke lyric video.

Daniel Pickard shared his first single 'Heartbeats the Flaw,' which traces the euphoric highs and catastrophic lows of romance to a nonchalant, French-touch groove. The song was included in Rolling Stone's 'Songs You Need To Know' series and comes with a stylish visualizer directed by Axel Gillot.

The Coventry-raised, London-based singer, songwriter, and musician — formerly of art-pop band Half Loon — has always been fascinated by social behaviors: the way people of all walks of life interact, the oddities of their movements. On his debut album Behaviour, sarcasm and self-deprecation hold sway on songs set in nineteenth-century gay brothels ('First Past the Pose'), swish hotel room afterparties ('Room Service'), New York basement bars, São Paolo's Guarulhos airport ('São Paulo'), and offices decked out in naff IKEA furniture ('MD is a Pervert') — articulated via French pop, Italo disco, Serge Gainsbourg lyricism, and contributions from Owen Pallett (Pet Shop Boys, Serge Gainsbourg, Daft Punk), and composer Michael Stein (Stranger Things). There are songs about youthful naivety, about lacking the gumption to say how you feel. There's even a love song: 'Love On A Lie,' originally written back in 2011 when Pickard was strung out in Sardinia after the breakdown of his first big romance.

On Behaviour, there's a dichotomy between cynicism and romance, and a 'take it or leave it' confrontation that runs through the album — 'but I'm discomfited by the fact that you might leave,' he says, 'because I really want you to take it.' And in contrast to some of the behaviors displayed by the characters in the songs — insecurity, immaturity, debauchery — there exists a refined, focused sensibility that binds the tracks together and speaks volumes about the kind of musical future Pickard sees for himself. 'The album is very purposeful,' he says. 'I'm not chancing it musically.'

Tracklist

01 First Past the Pose

02 Nominee

03 Catastrophe

04 Heartbeats the Flaw

05 Interlude

06 São Paulo

07 MD is a Pervert

08 Room Service

09 A Bum Suspected of Murder

10 Love on a Lie

About Daniel Pickard

'I like to pose questions that people don't want to think about or answer,' says Daniel Pickard. 'Not forcing an answer. Just playing around with it.' That inclination towards discomfiture, pushing and prodding at polite society, runs all the way through his debut album, Behaviour. Sarcasm and self-deprecation hold sway on songs set in nineteenth-century gay brothels, swish hotel room afterparties, New York basement bars, Sao Paolo's Guarulhos airport, and offices decked out in naff IKEA furniture — articulated via French pop, Italo disco, Serge Gainsbourg lyricism, and contributions from composer and violinist Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Pet Shop Boys) and composer Michael Stein (Stranger Things).

The Coventry-raised, London-based singer, songwriter, and musician — formerly of art-pop band Half Loon — has always been fascinated by social behaviours: the way people of all walks of life interact, the oddities of their movements, and 'social media trends where the best is kitsch and the worst is vomit.' On opening track 'First Past the Pose' he visits a Victorian gay brothel in a dream, while on 'Room Service,' he lingers at a hotel room afterparty because it beats feeling empty and alone. 'MD is a Pervert,' meanwhile, excoriates creepy managerial types: 'the saddening predictability of it.'

Pickard started working on Behaviour during the first Covid lockdown in 2020 while isolating with his family in Coventry. 'The benefit of that time for artists was that we were able to contact musicians like Owen Pallett and Michael Stein who were perhaps not otherwise engaged, because of what was going on,' he says. He engaged the services of co-producer Max Prior, and recorded vocals with Grammy-winning mixer Eduardo De La Paz at Toast, the Kensal Rise studio of producer Craig Silvey (Baxter Dury, Jarvis Cocker), and recorded the drums in West Hampstead's Hoxa HQ studio with Silvey's assistant Dani Spragg, who also engineered the record. Synths flew in from composer Alex Ball in Bristol, Carlos Trilha Müller in Brazil, and Stein in Texas. Lead single Heartbeats the Flaw, meanwhile, features vocals from French artist Mahault.

Antoine Chabert (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Christine and the Queens, Daft Punk) mastered the album in Paris — another perfect fit, given Behaviour wears its French influences on its sleeve, from the nonchalant dandy leanings of Sébastien Tellier, to Daft Punk, L'Impératrice, Ellie et Jacno, and producer SebastiAn. Elements of Italo disco worked their way into the songs too, as well as a film score sensibility.

Pickard picked up the guitar at 16, but it wasn't until he moved to London for university — living above the Big Red pub on Holloway Road in a halls of residence that used to be a Young Offenders Institute, oddly attracted to the narrow corridors and tiny cold damp box room, but with no money to do anything and on a course he didn't want to do — that he started writing: pen to paper, chords to songs. And then he started playing, first at an open mic night, then in venues across London and abroad.

In 2013 he formed Half Loon alongside Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton. They released an EP, played shows and festivals, and toured, before eventually disbanding in 2017. 'We were really good but we weren't productive enough,' says Pickard.

A 'take it or leave it' confrontation runs through the album, 'but I'm discomfited by the fact you might leave,' he says, 'because I really want you to take it.' And in contrast to some of the behaviours displayed by the characters in the songs — insecurity, immaturity, debauchery — runs a refined, focused sensibility that binds the tracks together and speaks volumes about the kind of musical future Pickard sees for himself. 'The album is very purposeful,' he says. 'I'm not chancing it musically.'

Photo Credit: Lottie Lunn | Download hi-res image