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NPR Music: Tiny Desk Concerts
Tiny Desk Concerts from NPR's All Songs Considered features your favorite musicians performing at Bob Boilen's desk in the NPR Music office. This is the AUDIO only archive.Are you a fancy A/V nerd and need video? Visit our new Tiny Desk Concert video channel. Eye-popping video and all of the music you've come to expect.

Keaton Henson: Tiny Desk Concert

By Robin Hilton
Published August 3, 2013 at 6:00 AM MDT

The day before Keaton Henson arrived to play the Tiny Desk, we hosted a group called The No BS! Brass Band, a nearly dozen-piece horn section with an almost brutal (and totally amazing) sound. It was one of the loudest and most thrilling, heart-pounding Tiny Desk sets we've ever had.

Keaton Henson's performance could not have been more unlike the show the day before. When a cozy crowd of curious listeners showed up the next day to see him play, I asked everyone to get as close as they could, without freaking out the admittedly shy singer from London. Don't let the presence of this fantastic recording (by our engineer Kevin Wait) fool you. Henson's voice was so fragile and hushed, if you were 10 feet away you would have barely heard a peep from him.

But what Henson's music lacked in volume, it more than made up for in feeling. If the No BS! Brass Band was one of the boldest Tiny Desk shows, his was among the most moving. As I mentioned back in April, when we introduced a video for his song "You," he has one of the most beautiful, arresting voices I've heard.

Remarkably, Henson has only been playing music for a couple years; he took up the guitar to help heal his broken heart after a failed relationship. He's also a poet and illustrator who's released one graphic novel called Gloaming and is already at work on another.

For this Tiny Desk performance, Henson performed three songs from his new album, Birthdays.

Set List

  • "You Don't Know How Lucky You Are"

  • "Sweetheart What Have You Done To Us"

  • "You"

    • Credits

    Producers: Denise DeBelius, Robin Hilton; Editor: Parker Miles Blohm; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Gabriella Garcia-Pardo; photo by Gabriella Demczuk/NPR

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Tags
    Tiny Desk Concerts
    Robin Hilton
    Robin Hilton is a producer and co-host of the popular NPR Music show All Songs Considered.
    See stories by Robin Hilton
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