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

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!

Richard Dawson is an interesting one. Yes, there are similarities with other avant garde guitarists like Bill Orcutt and Derek Bailey, but those dudes strike me as being very deliberately deconstructionist to an almost academic degree whereas Dawson's playing style is 100% expressionist and very audibly so. His lyrical approach and the regional, historical and autobiographical references he incorporates into his work are truly unique. Also, the influence of art and world music in his work is as strong as any English folk music. Not to mention the way he amps his nylon string guitar through a Fender, which is considered highly unorthodox but achieves a very particular tone. There's a reason Wire mag has been going crazy over him this year.

― quinoa: how's it spelt? (dog latin), Friday, January 23, 2015 2:43 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

brilliant post that needs to go here, nice one dl

New remix of Judas Iscariot by Basic House (Bish from Drunk In Hell/Opal Tapes).

http://www.factmag.com/2015/01/23/hear-basic-houses-misty-remix-of-newcastle-guitar-bard-richard-dawson/

An over-reliance on locations and names in lyrics is not to my taste. But: Dawson does it so much and so arrogantly I feel he's doing it deliberately to mock American songwriters who have interstates and national parks they'll namedrop without thinking about it. I mean, I think he's "taking the piss"

srsly been struggling with which riverbed tbh

He's basically doing the same stuff that happened in so much early 2000s psych-folk and freak-folk that I loved, not Devendra/Vetiver/Akron Family, but Cerberus Shoal/Big Blood, Eric Chenaux, Deep Dark United. Love this kind of stuff.

xp please LJ don't I come here to relax

sorry

there's something to be said about an overreliance on place names but dawson's use of microscopic detail is a v important part of his aesthetic - see the lyrics to Nothing Important where he compiles a huge list of childhood memories but then REJECTS them all - he has no need for them - it is more the tragic pathos of detail that he is invested in I'd say, less taking the piss (although there is a bit of that; he's very funny)

never heard any of those artists. links would be appreciated :)

or just single-song/single-album recommendations

I'm not so into that piss-taking theory, if only because it seems like a poor payoff for the effort it requires. I think as Dawson does it, it's serious (I don't mean po-faced).

Silly thing to take the piss out of, so, no.

Richard Dawson is an interesting one. Yes, there are similarities with other avant garde guitarists like Bill Orcutt and Derek Bailey, but those dudes strike me as being very deliberately deconstructionist to an almost academic degree whereas Dawson's playing style is 100% expressionist and very audibly so. His lyrical approach and the regional, historical and autobiographical references he incorporates into his work are truly unique. Also, the influence of art and world music in his work is as strong as any English folk music. Not to mention the way he amps his nylon string guitar through a Fender, which is considered highly unorthodox but achieves a very particular tone. There's a reason Wire mag has been going crazy over him this year.

― quinoa: how's it spelt? (dog latin), Friday, January 23, 2015 2:43 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

brilliant post that needs to go here, nice one dl

― my shoes are deception (imago), Friday, 23 January 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No it isn't.

LOL

I just responded to that in the EOY thread:

hey dog latin I am late for this but there is not one single thing about Bill Orcutt that is "academic", now please go listen to Harry Pussy's What Was Music and Ride A Dove.

it's a great post about Dawson, at least - I don't know Orcutt or Bailey

so you didn't know a few of the bits he was comparing it to - are you even going to start thinking before you type this stuff.

Place naming has always incited ire in my heart I guess since I heard some Canucks try and do it "she blew like a Chinook down Yonge Street" or something

If you like the raga guitar of Richard, search Eric Chenaux "Worm and Gear", it's on Soundcloud. Stompy vibe? "Sweetie" from the Cerberus Shoal split w Herman Dune (no Herman on it don't worry). Deep Dark United is my favourite band ever, seek "Zut".

Hey, I like Herman Dune. Grrrr.

omg I did not know about that Cerebus Shoal split, I love them, thank you!

I like Herman Dune too tbh! But for different reasons, different moods

Weirdly that CS/HD split is imo the best thing the Cerberus camp would do til Big Blood

yh cheers, stoked to hear these. micachu mixtape was gr8 btw so ty doubly

I agree that place naming can be irksome - claiming a sort of rootsy kinship in a play for perceived authenticity - but Dawson is playing with memory and its trappings, also he likes & revels in the sounds of the names a lot. Hogwhistle Hospital!

Didn't hear much Harry Pussy in the Dawson tracks I listened to; solo Orcutt is a different matter.

oh for sure, was just bringing up the HP albums is response to Orcutt's perceived "academic" qualities

Yeah they are pretty much the antithesis of academic albs (unless the Centre for Advanced Bill Harkelroad Studies has really taken off recently)

Hogwhistle?

OMG, it has been a long time since I listened to anything by Chenaux or Deep Dark United! Should dig some up. Has Dawson ever mentioned being aware of them?

For the record, the only Orcutt I've heard is 'A History Of Every One'. I will check out Harry Pussy. But yeah, IIRC that was an album of deconstructed standards and reminded me very much of Derek Bailey. I mean, I love and respect Bailey. He's a revolutionary and his ideas are incredible, but I listen to Dawson for very different reasons.

Respec' to Del

A gentleman and a scholar.

Not much of a singer though

Nobody's perfect.

Place naming has always incited ire in my heart I guess since I heard some Canucks try and do it "she blew like a Chinook down Yonge Street" or something

It's okay when Stomping Tom does it though, right?

we used to live there on vine st

feel like street names should be exempt bc there are so many repeats

Stompin' Tom does it just fine
Americans can get away with it usually but if you hear "Dayton, Ohio 1903" and get what I mean then good

I choose to take "Dayton, Ohio 1903" as a reference to first powered flight so that I can laugh at the narrator tbh

think I got that interpretation from a comment on songmeanings.com, though.

actually, I laugh with Randy at the person that asked Randy to write that type of song, i.e. "Sing a song of long ago"

listen not to belabor this orcutt stuff but listen to "judas iscariot" off the dawson album and not think of orcutt is pretty ridiculous imo

also i really do like this album good job richard dawson ilx poll season makes me combative for no good reason i'm glad this album exists and ppl are digging it

actually, I laugh with Randy at the person that asked Randy to write that type of song, i.e. "Sing a song of long ago"

Yes we're on the same page

"Robert Wyatt doing George Benson" is a wonderful observation.

yeah the first thing my wife compared "The Vile Stuff" to was Wyatt

An over-reliance on locations and names in lyrics is not to my taste. But: Dawson does it so much and so arrogantly I feel he's doing it deliberately to mock American songwriters who have interstates and national parks they'll namedrop without thinking about it. I mean, I think he's "taking the piss"

I think more specifically, the apocalyptic content of The Vile Stuff, wouldn't be as apparent if he didn't name all of the apostles [Thadeus, James and James Solicitors = James Son Of James, Miss Bartholemew…] so whether he's mocking or not, the list of names is kind of what the song's all about and it wouldn't work without them.

I dig this and I love the place-naming. His lyrics remind me of Nigel Blackwell although straining for a darkly surreal and wild poetic quality rather than Blackwell's comedy of the mundane.

amazing detail about the apostles - I totally missed that

well i'll be...

^

Listening to this record with a bit of a wobble on this morning, s'got me all over the place, am a mess