Having spent the better part of the last decade playing in bands around Melbourne and beyond, most notably as the guitarist of Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird, it’s been a long time coming for Kieran Christopherson to return to creating music under his own name. However, if his new single is anything to go by, there’s a vast amount of artistry that he’s been shaping in the background and we can only expect his debut album Grand Mote will showcase the stunning scope of his storytelling songwriting when it drops later this year.

Instantly evocative, ‘China’ emerges with a pulsing synthesiser that blurs with a drum machine to give the track an urgent motorik pace, while this mood is slightly offset by the tender guitars that jangle and swell amidst the soundscape. The effect is simultaneously restless and serene, which means that Kieran’s sandy vocals are able to take full control of the track’s emotional potency when they appear, each lyric loaded with assertive strength as well as grief-stricken poignancy.

Although the track’s not exactly a slowburner, ‘China’ takes its time unraveling open; it’s only at the two minute mark that a full band materialises, expanding on the track’s enthralling atmosphere with idiosyncratic guitar lines and a determined groove that rides the track to its end. However, Kieran's vocals are still as incisive and considered as they were previously, and as the instrumental layers continue to amount, the emotive context that anchors the mood of 'China' becomes clearer and all the more affecting.

Speaking about the track, Kieran shares “‘China’ is all about juxtaposition. It's a song about grief, about my Grandpa's death. On day one of producing it, I doubled the timing of the drum machine and it just felt right, to set a song about dying out to a tune with relentless energy. It turned it from a bluesy slowjam to something which I think is far more unique. It's also not a political statement in any way. Pa used to call me 'me old china' or 'china plate', in the fashion of rhyming slang for 'mate'. I call people china now too and I kind of forgot there was a huge country called China while we were producing the track.”