Extraordinary songs about ordinary lives by the wonderful Newcastle alternative folk singer-songwriter – poetic, strikingly detailed, touching, warm, gently humorous, melancholy, original and gorgeously profound, bringing beauty to banality, private tragedies and small joys. As well as Dawson’s distinctive vocals, often rising into falsetto, and his fabulous guitar playing, it’s a stripped-back sound, and here including dynamic, chattering, ghostly saxophone and the bare patter of minimal drumming. With a different cast of first-person narrative characters, there are some parallels with 2019’s brilliant album 2020, telling stories and depicting lives with an understated charm.
Polytunnel, for example, follows the comfort found in the community of allotment from the point of view of a depressed man. Gondola presents a grandmother reflecting on her past, present and future life, wondering where the time has gone, with reference to daytime TV shows and perfectly placed details (“Good morning Britain / A soft-boiled egg / Piers is on Lorraine / Shooting pains down my left leg / Holly and Phil can pay your energy bills / Dead wasp on the windowsill”), with references to her family and a birthday trip to Venice. Boxing Day Sales recounts two friends bumping into each other and going for a cafe scone (“Go on, go on, you owe it to yourself”) amid the winter high street mayhem. Bullies recounts how father and son both get into trouble for fighting at school from their various perspectives. Closer More Than Real sees a father thinking about birth of his daughter and all the promises he made about being a dad, with moods of heartbreak and redemption, including a beautiful moment when Dawson’s partner Sally suddenly also takes over the vocals.
All the songs are different gems, with other standouts including Removals Van and all the emotion of a house move, or Knot filled with vivid details as a tense couple attend an old pal’s wedding (“The best man's speech / Is pretty much a bleak ham-fisted PowerPoint presentation”) while two songs capture more surreal experiences, such as Bolt, in which lightning strikes a domestic telephone line, or, the superb The Question, which moves through different musical sections and changes of pace, and is about Elsie who witnesses the appearance of the ghost of a railway station master (the previous owner of the house before the line was closed) who died in accident, now with a severed head, wandering lost and aimless (“where are you going?”). Vivid, poetic, truly unique, oddly brilliant work to be treasured and listened to over and over. Out on Domino Records / Weird World.
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