When Ken Newman sings, he mesmerises. You could hear a pin drop from the next room when you absorb yourself into his humble masterstrokes, and his latest single, Who Are the Bad Guys, carries that same arresting emotional gravity. Across Latin-inspired, finger-picked acoustic guitar, within a warm, timbre-rich production, he summons poetic introspective wisdom into the accordant atmosphere.
His life-worn, whiskey-soaked vocals evoke the same sensations as listening to Cat Stevens, Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandt, yet Newman’s phrasing belongs entirely to his own weathered conscience. Originally from San Francisco and now based much of the year in Zihuatanejo, he brings decades of storytelling, performance and creative direction into a song that examines power, inequality, propaganda and complicity with a steady hand.
Newman is one of the most criminally underrated political troubadours of our time. Socio-political tragedy finds devastating resonance through his voice, because he allows ambiguity, empathy and discomfort to alchemise. Instead of flattening the subject into sloganism, he lets the lyric turn the lens towards the systems around us and the parts of ourselves that keep them standing.
With the moral gravity of Leonard Cohen, the folk lineage of Bob Dylan and the atmospheric darkness of New Model Army, Who Are the Bad Guys cuts deep.
Who Are the Bad Guys is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.
Review by Amelia Vandergast
