by James Grimshaw (@jimgrimshank)
Richard Dawson should not need much in the way of introduction, and yet remains something of a fringe presence in folk and left-field circles – straddling, as he does, an uneasy gap between storyteller, experimental musician, and folk pallbearer. The Ruby Cord, released in early November last year, is the third in what has become a trilogy of albums, starting with 2017’s Peasant.
Peasant was set between 500 and 700 A.D., while follow-up album 2020 uncompromisingly tackled both the broad and subtle of modern living. The Ruby Cord, then, is an album about the future – though all three more or less make their setting the humble, minute and majestic North-East of England. This much is made abundantly clear in the first track, “The Hermit” – a 41-minute odyssey that marries Chaucerian sensibility with distant future “newness,” and places its scenes along an unassuming river in Northumberland.
An album-long song is a challenging start to any album, and “The Hermit” is no different, but the space it creates is compelling enough that you never resent the investment. Devastation is found in the smallest and most unlikely of places; a swelling of lightly tube-driven guitar and low-end heft, fifteen minutes in and after a well-earned silence (“one hungers for nothing”), is a revelatory moment – and all the more so for the simplicity of its form.
“The Hermit”’s refrain, meanwhile, is a delicate, growing, budding passage that endlessly sets a scene even after the “story” ends. This final movement is an ode, sung in choir and evocative of Thee Silver Mt Zion’s more plaintive moments, as in “The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes” or even the final throes of “What We Loved Was Not Enough”.
Hard as it is to leave “The Hermit” and its landscape behind, a full album of material remains – and one that enthrals on its own distinct merits. “Thicker Than Water” brings jaunt to proceedings, despite its harrowing tale of post-apocalypse and mind divorced of body. The song’s volta, wherein its protagonist discovers their own physical form, is delivered over the central hook as if a flatlining ECG, brought in and out of key as things irreverently, and irrespectively, carry on. “The Fool” follows, turning The Ruby Cord on its head with abrasive timbral shifts that lean towards the industrial. “Museum” is a fun turning-over of memory post-civilisation, as even the form of the song itself becomes distilled and distorted – its ending an abstracted, simplified reflection of its opening.
“The Tip of an Arrow” is a rollicking war song that folds the generational nature of knowledge into the mix. “No-one” plays with synthesis to generate a new field recording of life after us, and “Horse and Rider” closes the suite with bittersweet tradition; familiar tropes and structures, accompanied by the most agreeable of strings, bring us to the “only way out […] forward and down /[… a] neverending passage through the cold and dark”.
Throughout, Dawson’s vocals are cathartically frank in spite of their often-flowery content. His Northumbrian inflections are worn proudly on his sleeve, every near-glottal ‘uh’ in “cups”, “bluff” or “bustling” somehow a tonic to the ears. He also delights in timbre, pulling threads of contemporary arrangement to drag your attention across eras – both away from and towards the room, though always with restraint.
Restraint is an odd word to use for Richard Dawson. His work often feels far from it, stuck through with exuberant phrasings, fantastical arrangements and even “lore”. Yet, some form of “restraint” threads The Ruby Cord together: electric guitars hold back from carrying any one song away into the night, though they could entirely by their own merits; string arrangements contextualize Dawson’s flighty use of falsetto to convey both conviction and frailty; synths are conspicuous but never overweeningly so.
The Ruby Cord is a hard listen, in the best possible way. It demands your attention and challenges your available time, but rewards repeat listens and accolades you for every lyric or musical connection made (and there are some “leitmotifs” to find across Dawson’s discography for the more avid of listeners). It is an anthology, a concept anthology, that contains multitudes and forces you to imagine.