Daniel Pickard @ Mascara Bar

Daniel Pickard LIVE Mascara Bar

“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 music. Sarcasm and self-deprecation hold sway on songs set in nineteenth-century gay brothels, swish hotel room afterparties, New York basement bars, São 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 is fascinated by social behaviours: the way people of all walks of life act, interact, and present themselves, the oddities of their movements, and “social media trends where the best is kitsch and the worst is vomit”. Coventry is a place he describes as his “STI: soul, trauma, and incandescence." ~ Kate French-Morris