Richard Dawson (raucous experimental UK folk racket w/ intense picaresque realness vox)

I'm interested

i've liked some of this guy;s stuff but i'm getting an icky jam-band feeling from that last youtube

how many minutes did you listen for

after 2 or 3 minutes the vocals come in and it's completely gripping, imo

i listened to the whole thing!

I think this would probably appeal to folks who dig the Incredible String Band. I'm more on the Holy Modal Rounders' team, myself.

I can see tracks like Judas Iscariot and all the instrumental pieces on The Glass Trunk appealing to Derek Bailey fans. John Fahey fans might get a lot out of this too.

Judas Iscariot is like a more deliberate Bill Orcutt

Yeah, I can see that.

Dammmm, just listened to Nothing Important on Spotify: "Judas Iscariot" an instrumental,justifies the Fahey and Derek Bailey comparisons right away, unselfconsciously; title track's vocals vulnerable, idealistic, tenacious, suggesting Robert Wyatt and Roy Harper; "The Vile Stuff" is a mighty tag-magnet for all of the above and RIYL ISB, the groove of solo Wino, Dredd Foole, and maybe Jandek (though I'm not a J-man fan). This track is or surely should be the one to get him on campus etc. radio. "Doubting Thomas" instrumental perfectly folds into its four minutes plus. The words haven't all registered yet, but I like the ones that have. Thanks ILM!

Seems that this all comes from his own youngblood experiences (incl. listening to his records and himself), more than wearing influences on his sleeve. Though still working on his own unmistakable sound, own voice, as writers say.

It sounds like a stream of consciousness, both musically and lyrically. In many ways its a truer and more difficult form of alternative/outsider music than any noise or deliberately anti-melody record, because there are tunes and melodies here, they just seem all wrong - the notes, the chords, the progressions all seem wrong. Like a folk Beefheart.

Description sounds like Kevin Coyne, in KC's more out there moments. But he doesn't sound like Kevin Coyne, more like Roy Harper gone weird.

Yeah, Coyne and Beefheart are in the same associative family tree, but actual sound closer to young Harper.

Seriously one of the year's best records

i liked the first track on glass trunk with the letter so much but have cooled on him since then

Oh yeah this is pretty cool. Like the guitar playing a lot.

listening judas iscariot right now

good, but as a couple others pointed out VERY bill orcutt almost to the point of distraction for me sometimes

I'm liking "Nothing Important" quite a bit.

huh ok now the next song is L@@K RARE OOP PRIVATE PRESS UK PROGRESSIVE WITCH FOLK VG++ ONLY 200 COPIES WERE PRESSED

this song is awesome

also the first song was good, i shouldn't be backhanded, it was more "put together" than orcutt usually is and it's not like recalling bill orcutt is an easy task either way

Richard Dawson 'The Vile Stuff' (Karen Gwyer Remix)

Listen to Karen Gwyer's hypnotic version of the song https://soundcloud.com/weirdworldrecordco/richard-dawson-the-vile-stuff-karen-gwyer-remix

"Nothing Important is driven by an ongoing conflict between entropic impulsiveness and an almost classical sense of beauty and order...Dawson's most ambitious and affecting composition to date." 7.8 - Pitchfork

"The 33-year-old Newcastle avant-troubadour has made one of the most unique singer-songwriter records in recent memory with the abrasive, vivid Nothing Important.” - Rolling Stone

The sinister lament that is ‘The Vile Stuff’ shows Dawson as a master of the minutiae of British storytelling as he charts the downfall of a group of students on a school trip, “downing Asda’s own-brand stubbies in the lad’s bogs” before succumbing to all sorts of transgression and calamity – fracturing skulls and cheekbones, stabbing screwdrivers through their hands and hopping into bed with their teachers. It’s a song as surreal as it is strangely relatable in its pitch-black humour and effortless conjuring of grizzly adolescent fantasy.

In her remix, Gwyer takes the song's ominous instrumental loop and tones it up into a muscular, sinister alien-club track reminiscent of her releases for No Pain In Pop.

Read a recent interview with Richard Dawson via BOMB Magazine (conversation w Cian Nugent):http://bombmagazine.org/article/2000044/richard-dawson/

That's from dominorecordco.com, so's this

http://i2.cmail1.com/ei/d/36/889/699/csimport/RichardDawson-CROPPEDFORPR.151153.jpeg

oh my fucking god this remix

just found myself listening to this dude earlier today cuz he is supporting the ex next week. definitely pro him

listened to him for the first time yesterday, siked to have a new person to listen to whose work I think is amazing

to me, this has some similarities to akron/family back in the day when they were really on top of what I believed to be an extremely compelling sound

listening to the back half of nothing important and oh man this guy

maybe I need to go to both days of the the ex thing

aah, i used to kind of know this guy from when he worked at alt vinyl in newcastle years ago, pleased to see him making a name for himself (or is it just on ilm . i saw him play loads of times about 5 or 6 years ago and he was always great but never got round to hearing any of his albums somehow (will rectify this). i remember being being quite taken aback when i first heard him singing, him being such a mild mannered, softly spoken chap.

i`ll admit my memories of that time in the north east are getting pretty hazy, but i remember wondering at the time htf maximo park and the futureheads blew up when field music and richard dawson were sooo much better

gosh how did a band whose calling card was a novelty 80s cover make a deeper impression on the public than this guy with his sixteen minute song about school kids getting drunk on 4x and stabbing themselves with screwdrivers

ha! well it was back when i actually gave a fuck about such things.

five or six years ago RD's music was much more quote-unquote accessible straight-bat folk-rock kinda stuff; afaik no-one took much notice until he started to get ~weird~

So what a couple of bits I've heard reminds me of (so far) is some Harsh 70s..-era Dead C 'heavy' strumming. After five mins I can't be arsed.

I dreamt about Richard Dawson last night.

In the dream the mainstream had decided to try and co-opt him and so he had been invited on TV wanker-fest Sunday Brunch with Tim Lovejoy and The Other One. It was a special summer edition which was outside and the invited "too old for Hoxton but we're going to pretend anyway" middle class twunt target market were having a picnic. To try and make him more palatable they had given him a completely inappropriate backing band and they started a version of The Brisk Lad that sounded a bit like Take That. Richard tried to destabilise things by picking up a saxophone (which he clearly couldn't play) and tunelessly honking over them after the first verse. The producers responded by turning up the backing to try and restore order. Richard then walked off the stage in amongst the picnickers and started ad-lining verses, but when he said he would split the stolen sheep "from maw to cunt" it got a bit much for the producers and it went to a black screen.

:D

someone not on phone pls repost to striking imagery thread asap

That should have been "ad-libbing" near the end, but autocorrect obvs.

AAAAAAHHHH

Just interviewed him. Lovely man.

Spoke to him after the gig and can corroborate this

this is great! how did i not hear it till now?

This should be right up my alley but I've never managed to get past the first couple tracks.

there are only 4 tracks

I've listened to this about 4 times in the last 24 hours. Such expressive guitar playing. It makes me wonder what his guitar method is. He said in a Wire interview that when it comes to different tunings, he forgets what they are, but it definitely sounds like he's throwing in some interesting tunings in there all the same.

also everyone likes a guy who posts his posts to multiple threads

imo it is nothing short of the finest pastoralia the north of england has produced, its folk stylings tempered with something utterly seaborne & untameable. 'nothing important' is a preternaturally brilliant folk-prog exegesis on mortality for god's sake, yet it also feels…slightly improvised?

glad to have you on board, i really think this stuff is the most interesting & emotionally affecting music coming out of this country at the moment

― London's Left-Wing Utopian Non-League Ultras Are Reclaiming Football (imago), Wednesday, January 7, 2015 2:26 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if nothing else, "utterly seaborne" has me downloading this atm

this fucking guy... the lyrical swing between the mundane and the fantastical... All in a weird semi-tonal bloodchant:

Year 7s on a school trip to Featherstone Castle
And some wee scallywag's brung
A Coca-Cola bottle containing a spirit
Poor Peter Hepplethwaite cracks open his head
On a shiny brass doorknob
And has to be rushed by helicopter amublance
To Haltwhistle Hospital

Si Shovell fills a Reebok pump
With the pulp from his belly
Then sets off a fire extinguisher
In the girl's dormitory
And finally clambers into bed with Miss Bartholomew
Much to the chagrin of the deputy headmaster
Whose scarlet skull is firmly wedged between her thighs

I only drank a few little droplets
I only took a tiny draught of the vile stuff

Downing Asda's own-brand stubbies in the lad's bogs
I listen to the dull reflection of a carillon in the toilet bowl
My A-levels drifting away from me
Matthew Mooney's hockle in my hair
Smells like menthol tabs

Outside the chip shop Thaddeus Wagstaff fractures my cheekbone;
3 empty cans of Castlemaine XXXX
Go rolling down my trouser leg
Blood, snot and curry coalesce in the corners of my nails
My friends drifting away from me

I only drank a few little droplets
I only took a tiny draught of the vile stuff

Attempting to penetrate a coconut husk with a Philips-head screwdriver
I pierce a hole straight through my hand into the laminate worktop
It's a major operation to repair a damaged tendon;
I come around with the tube still down my throat
The milk of amnesia fills my cup and back into the hole I go

Snoring like a pan of broth, I arouse the ire
Of my fellow patients
Wagging their ladles in the dark

My neighbour Andrew lost two fingers to a Staffie-cross
Whilst jogging over Cow Hill with a Pepperami in his bum-bag
He's a junior partner at James & James no-win-no-fee solicitor
Thinking of relocating to a Buddhist monastery in Halifax

He reckons I should try meditation
He reckons it could benefit my peace of mind

My bedroom walls are papered with the stripes of Newcastle United
Between which I perceive the presence of a horse-headed figure
Holding aloft a flaming quiver of bramble silhouettes
He is the King of Children
Singing like a boiler: 'Tomorrow is on its way'

I haven't had a wink of sleep and now the sun is in my porridge
I'm starting a BTEC in Engineering at Tynemouth College
My thermos flask leaks parsnip soup on the metro
Clogging up the keys of my MacBook

Carrot pennies steam amidst a pyre of pencils
Ruck-sack dripping up the steps of WH Smith's
To buy a fresh pad of paper

I only drank a few little droplets
I only took a tiny draught of the vile stuff

Nothing Important is even better, maybe?

I am born by Caesarian section at 9:30 AM
in Princess Mary's Maternity Hospital
on the 24th May, forty years ago today,
dangled by the ankle, smacked across the bum,
swaddled in a blanket howling like a wheel.
My big brother on his tip-toes hisses 'I don't like him'.
He's Maradona, I'm Peter Beardsley, chasing a ball through the mud
followed by the kitchen window, bellowing through the fern:
'Boys! Dinner's ready!'
Dad is tuning in the telly beyond a heaving mountain of spaghetti hoops.

I am nothing
You are nothing
Nothing important
Death within a dream

Petrified on the back of a pedalo in the Balearic Sea off Alcudia
I can see the ghost of my uncle Derek waving to us from the beach,
gently drifting out of reach,
the telephone receiver swinging by its cord,
a glass of broken beer expanding on the lino.
My mam slips into the coffin
a polaroid of his sweetheart
Clutching Good-Luck Bear I peer gingerly over the side,
press my nose up to the tide,
and there behold a barracuda chewing on a chrysanthemum
and a family of clownfish hovering in the corpse's hair.

I am nothing
You are nothing
Nothing important
Death within a dream

In the scullery of the cub-hut my clarinet falls
into a sack of flour - a flurry of pins
squashed into the leather handle
a crescent moon of sleeping fig-wasps.
Drizzling my fingers with The Magic Sponge
Dad says 'we'll probably have to chop them off'.
He collapses like a canvas tent on the floodlit astroturf
rent by a fibula guide-rod poking a hole through his shin
There are teardrops in his moustache
charging a flute of champagne
down the aisle and out for a throw-in
A St.John ambulance careers between the sugary pillars of the wedding cake

I am nothing
You are nothing
Nothing important
Death within a dream

A crystal spoon
A pewter tankard
these words inscribed upon the base:
HAPPY RETIREMENT BEST GRANDDAD IN THE WORLD
A toby jug filled to the brim with curtain hooks
A sheepskin rug discoloured with tobacco smoke
within its braids concealed a rank
of plastic soldiers set to burst underfoot
Berwick in oils: a skiff on the swollen Tweed
cradling a false pearl
a ceramic seraph
with an ashtray for a brain
- and I don't care about these things
Why do they remain so clear while the faces of my loved ones disappear?

A Rington's plate
a forking hairline seam of superglue through the Black Gate
a digital photoframe
frozen on a blurry orange thumb
I don't care about these things
Old karate trophies
I remember these things
Thimbles and pesetas
I remember all these things
A roll of Woolworth's price stickers
I can see all these things but
where have all my people gone?

In the end it wasn't meant to be.
He was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen.
He survived for seven days
before he slipped away

yeah try not to cry

I like those lyrics. Right now, I just wish he didn't sing them in unison with the guitar lead like Robert Wyatt doing George Benson. But I am trying.

'Nothing Important' > 'The Vile Stuff', though

The Vile Stuff is utterly amazing but yeah it got those votes (compared to NI) on the strength of having a shortened version with a video. Nothing Important is maybe one of the 20 greatest songs I've ever heard. I like that it got 134 points in the EOY poll with 3 votes alone!

the dream about the minotaur in Fresher's Ball

It wasn't until I read this upthread that I connected it with the singer in "Ogre" dreaming of skyscrapers before the child vanishes!

Haven't dug all the way into the new one yet, but I do appreciate his apparent desire in the early songs to distill his thing into an incredibly simple, clear, efficient and approachable version of itself. Which "Polytunnel" really seemed to manage. (It's replaced "Wooden Bag" as the Dawson song my younger kid wants to hear all the time.) For me there have definitely been times in the past where his willingness to aim at really earnestly human topics seems worrisomely clunky right up until I've gotten into the song and am forced to think no, this is just a plain and affecting statement about real life, and its being poised on that edge is a good part of why it's going to make me increasingly borderline-weepy every time I hear it

It wasn't until I read this upthread that I connected it with the singer in "Ogre" dreaming of skyscrapers before the child vanishes!

Oh, damn. The Fresher's Ball dream of course happening after a child vanishes.

Can't account for it yet, but End of the Middle has me rapt. Noticing a theme of natural forces trying to make their way indoors -- the lightning strike in Bolt, the blizzard in Boxing Day Sales.

his lyrical approach on this is mostly so mundane that it's hard to have any interest there, and his material loses a lot without the rich arrangements - the arrangements here are mostly so stripped back and rudimentary that they feel like demos by comparison

the lyrics to "more than real" are definitely corny but that feels very deliberate given the arrangement, i don't really mind that

two great tracks is more than i was expecting given the singles and the rest is still fine, the only thing i really dislike is "polytunnel" which leans into all his most irritating qualities, but it's got nothing on his best work

that's funny, the reason why i love polytunnel is that it leans away from the cohered narrative or character study that's his default mode and appears simply as these snatches and fragments which aren't necessarily related to one another. find there is so much more affect in these isolated moments and pleasure in the phrases as they sound without having to join them together around a fictional person.

Been playing Henki, The Ruby Cord, and End of the Middle over and over again this week. Reading and re-reading what the music publications had to say about them all. I love this insight from Konstantinos Pappis:

[The Tip of an Arrow] is about a father refusing to let his daughter conform with the times, so of course it’s a chugging metal riff they adopt as the language of resistance.

Pretty melodies and great Sally vocals aside, I can't feel my way into More than Real, but the rest of the new album is meaning more & more to me. 3:31 to 5:56 of The Question has become one of my favorite bits in the whole Dawson catalogue.

Okay fuck, More than Real finally got to me, I get it now -- the bleeping gloom and how it connects & undercuts / reinterprets "how my own dad was with me," right, god, there's the tears. Richard, I surrender!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002c0v8

"Grab a brew and take a pew for a very special edition of Late Junction, as we head to Northumberland to pay a visit to the home of Geordie troubadour Richard Dawson."

That was fantastic. And now, there ya have it: I have knowingly heard Kraftwerk. What an introduction.

By the way, I still listen often to End of the Middle, and still think it's genius. (Ye olde chorus of one.)

It's my family's last week before we move house, one province to the south. We've been in the same city for eight years and the same apartment for three, so it feels like a big deal. I get very happy every time we start stuffing things into boxes because Removals Van inevitably starts playing in my head.

Also -- this past term at the uni I was assigned to teach a "cross-cultural communication" class, into which I of course incorporated a unit on music videos. Today a student let me know that as we watched Horse + Rider ("cinema" style -- I'd drawn the curtains, turned out the lights, hit "play") she was moved to tears. And a few days later she realized that the scene in which Richard dances with abandon as the sun goes down had cured her of depression. That was a few months ago. She's still doing fine.

I didn't need any more reasons to love Richard Dawson, but here we are

Generally speaking, Free Humans doesn't sound particularly great to me. I'll take Nothing Important and Henki and The Ruby Cord and End of the Middle over Free Humans anytime.

But then there are days like today, when it sounds like one of the best albums ever made.

It's been a while, but here it comes! FREE HUMANS SEASON!

Ah! In "Gondola", I've always heard the narrator lamenting "And I went to work for Dad / In the jewellery shop I wish I had. // Go into higher education / But Tom was always the clever one". But the punctuation in the subtitles of the (yes great!) video indicates that their actual lament is: "And I went to work for Dad / In the jewellery shop. // I wish I had gone into higher education / But Tom was always the clever one". Not a gigantic discrepancy, but perhaps a bit less tragic.

I like that video a lot, too. Especially the long scene near the end, during the instrumental outro, with the close-up of the actor's eyes above the melancholy smile.

When this record first came out, I could listen to it several times a day, just enjoying the music and the singing and starting to unravel the stories. Now I can only listen to it on certain days, in certain moods, because these songs are too awesome to be background music, but every time I do listen carefully, I end up crying through half the thing. Only recently realized how painful and profound Boxing Day Sales is -- and Boxing Day Sales had been the album's last lyrical hold-out, which means that now *every* song cuts deep.

I've bawled my eyes out to More than Real on a crowded public street, on the bus, on campus...

The way her expression conveys noticing the "dead fly on the windowsill" is masterful.

Totally the same about certain days and moods! On some levels I'd be happy to listen to his stuff all the time, but some of it is so emotionally affecting that it has to come out sparingly. That's pretty rare for me, and often song-specific, but with Dawson there are all sorts of parts where I know I'll end up focused on them and getting really emotional. (I wrote a thing about "Jogging" a while back in part because it snuck up on me on this front: somehow the possibility that the narrator is explaining the whole thing to a stranger while seeking marathon sponsors just gets into me.)

I remember that Jogging writeup very fondly, yes :)

I saw this guy when he played at an Adam Buxton podcast recording. He was OK.

BTW, my Richard rankings:

1. The Ruby Cord
2. Nothing Important
3. End of the Middle
4. Henki
5. The Glass Trunk

I would call Nothing Important more of a start-to-finish perfect record than The Ruby Cord, but The Ruby Cord has The Hermit, which is my favorite 40 minutes of Richard, perhaps never to be topped. And, unlike Nothing Important or End of the Middle, The Ruby Cord isn't so heavy emotionally that I hesitate to play it. Most weeks, I listen to The Ruby Cord two or three times.

And then Bulbils is this jar of swirling colors over on the side-shelf.

I think I like The Magic Bridge the best and I have a lot of time for Peasant.

*wasp* not fly obv

peasant and the ruby cord are masterpieces and nothing else quite compares to those

I've tried & tried with Peasant but still can't connect. In my own personal narrative of his life in music, Nothing Important was so perfect that he had to reset, and Peasant and Mogik and 2020 were his way of ambitiously but only sometimes gracefully finding a new voice, and a new kind of story to tell.

From what I can tell of Richard's *own* narrative of his life in music, the big breakdown apparently happened after The Ruby Cord, making End of the Middle the first post-reset album. Recent interviews suggest he's more into film connoisseurship than musicmaking at the moment.

Soooo...

Attempting to penetrate a coconut husk with a Philips-head screwdriver
I pierce a hole straight through my hand into the laminate worktop.

That's crucifixion imagery. I never noticed that before.

And then -- perhaps a stretch, but considering what just came before, conceivably not; in the next two lines:

It's a major operation to repair a damaged tendon
I come around with the tube still down my throat

an echo of the Resurrection?

When I was a kid one of my Sunday School teachers showed up heavily bandaged and explained that he'd had a power drill go through the center of his hand, and it was a real elephant-in-the-room thing, sitting in a church basement with absolutely nobody acknowledging the resonance

exciting: https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/barbican-announces-richard-dawson-delight-is-right-all-dayer-in-march-2026

damn that lineup looks great! more with Circle! hope it gets recorded.

New Hen Ogledd tune got that sad and epic Final Fantasy VI Returners vibe.

I love Free Humans, this I know; I love Rhodri Davies electric harp solos over synthpop.

Played this new song about eighteen times tonight!

When Presbyterians reformed the Church
It wasn't enough

Guess I'm somewhere around 75 listens now. These three-month spaces between announcement and release are, oof. At least there'll be podcasts / interviews.

really liking the new hen ogledd record

nah this is pure gubbins imo

imago, ever since you turned your back on End of the Middle, I just can't trust ya quite the same :) I spent a few autumn weeks teaching End of the Middle in a literature class, and now I'm more in awe of it than ever. It's a spiderweb, formed of many elegantly linked threads! -- Actually, I prefer my original image of "an eviscerated 2020", but it's not as dark an album as I believed initially.

Ogledd's not a "love at first listen" kinda band for me, though one listen was all "Scales will fall" needed, and I'm still crazy about it. "Clara" was bleh for several listens but finally hooked me. So I'm optimistic about the album as a whole.

I've tried with the Hen Ogledd records, I just can't connect with them at all.

A couple of friends often include a Richard Dawson track if they send me a CD complilation and I've found myself wondering how he is "regarded" beyond those two friends. I kind of hear him as ... If Esther Rantzen's That's Life was revived, he'd probably suit the programme (which I guess means I could seem him as a contemporary Jake Thackray) but I suspect there's a lot more going on that I'm missing. I vaguely recall he on the front cover of the Wire years ago but don't remember reading this.

And/or anyone want to suggest a "top ten Richard Dawson songs"?

The Ruby Cord from 2022 and Nothing Important from 2014 are about as high in my pantheon as albums can get. I get that he sounds alternately plain or abrasive to some (I taught a lot of his songs this year, which was a nice way to be reminded how niche the appeal of his music really is -- but also how, when it hits, it hits) but all I hear is beauty & soul... and yet there are two major/celebrated albums of his I can completely do without, and never listen to.

The way I look at his songwriting arc, Nothing Important was a precocious and prophetic glimpse of what he's capable of, and it took him until 2021 to start being able to achieve similarly profound results more methodically.

I adore his ambient work with Bulbils too, but the songs are incomparable.

My top ten -- no sorry, twelve! I couldn't bear to leave off the last two:

1. The Hermit (2022) (41 minutes long, my favorite thing he's done thus far, and one of my favorite songs of all time)
2. The Vile Stuff (2014)
3. Thicker than Water (2022)
4. Bolt (2025)
5. The Tip of an Arrow (2022)
6. The question (2025)
7. Ivy (2021)
8. Removals van (2025)
9. The Ice-Breaker Baikal (2012)
10. The Fool (2022) (the first song of his I heard; it made an instant convert of me)
11. Nothing Important (2014)
12. The minotaur of Cowhill (2020)

Nothing from 2020 is insane to me, that's his best album imho. "Civil Servant" and "Fulfilment Centre" would be in my top 10 for sure.

I will also shout out "Fresher's Ball" from 2020, and add that nothing from Peasant is also nutso.

Can't I've ever noticed any similarity to Jake Thackray!

Let's do this off the top of my head then and correct a few Peasant, 2020 and Magic Bridge related wrongs

1. Nothing Important
2. Ogre
3. Black Dog In The Sky
4. The Vile Stuff
5. Shapeshifter
6. Jogging
7. The Tip Of An Arrow
8. Weaver
9. Judas Iscariot
10. Horse And Rider

peasant and the ruby cord are his best, just listen to those

I tried with Peasant and 2020 for years, sometimes listening on repeat for a week at a time, hoping to unlock them, sometimes returning for stray listens after a few months away. Nothing helped. It's weird, because I love the things right before (The Glass Trunk, Nothing Important) and right after (Bulbils, Henki) so incredibly much.

On Peasant I love the sound but not the songs; on 2020 I like most of the songs well enough, but the sound gets on my nerves. Fresher's Ball the exception there, a favorite for sure, if not personal Top 12 material -- a preview of my beloved End of the Middle.

limiting myself to two tracks i would recommend "ogre" and "museum"