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Following the release of Ruby Cord (2022), the final album in a trilogy that began Peasant (2017), Richard Dawson has today announced his new album End of the Middle, on which, “Everything is held back and soft“. Due for release on Valentine’s Day (14th February 2025), he leads the way with his new single and video “Polytunnel”.
Thomas Blake said at the end of his review of Ruby Cord, “Dawson always speaks with unparalleled eloquence and imagination about the concerns and the comforts we all face.” While such concerns have no doubt also shaped End of the Middle, Dawson is happy to leave us in the dark with a contradictory album title and a lead single that’s also open to individual interpretation as it warmly depicts a gardener engaged in the noble, calming, mysterious business of raising vegetables whilst dealing with illness.
“I think I know what’s happening in the song, but hopefully that’ll be different for each person listening,” Dawson says. “I like that the line ‘Out the gate and down the lane’ – it could mean going down the allotment, or it could mean going somewhere else. Tunnel is obviously a very loaded word. There’s possibly a lot of drama happening outside of the lines of the song…. Or not. It might just be a song about an allotment.”
The video – directed by James Hankins – was filmed at several allotments, and its all-ages, all-faces quiet joy is a beautiful tribute to these communal, alternative spaces.
As Rich sat in his own allotment shed writing lyrics for the record, he looked out over still green slopes of the Tyne valley with his only company being the wasps, which would occasionally land in his brandy-glass cup of tea or the horses who would pop by to stare into his window. It’s an intimate scene that is almost reminiscent of the kind he sketches out across End of the Middle. “I wanted this album to be small-scale and very domestic,” he explains. “To be stripped back, reconnect with the basics and let everything speak for itself – to be really stark and naked by just putting the words and melodies out there.”
End of the Middle is richly intricate, evocative, tactile and almost has the transportive ability to put you in the places and scenarios it describes. Partly inspired by his love of the films of Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, the album focuses around a family unit. “It zooms in quite close-up to try and explore a typical middle class English family home,” Dawson says. “We’re listening to the stories of people from three or four generations of perhaps the same family. But really, it’s about how we break certain cycles. I think the family is a useful metaphor to examine how things are passed on generationally.”
To further emphasize the significance of the title and this circular-cum-middle endpoint, the DomMart vinyl version of the album will be a reverse cut, playing from the middle outwards, in the opposite direction to a standard LP.
Dawson will also play a small show at South London’s The Ivy House in December. Further live dates will be announced.
End of the Middle Tracklisting:
1. Bolt
2. Gondola
3. Bullies
4. The question
5. Boxing Day sales
6. Knot
7. Polytunnel
8. Removals van
9. More than Real
End of the Middle is available to pre-order on Dom-Mart reverse-playing vinyl, indies-exclusive vinyl (with signed print), Dinked-exclusive yellow vinyl (with 7” of 2 bonus tracks), standard vinyl, CD and digitally. Pre-order: DomMart | Digital
Upcoming live dates:
Saturday 7th December – The Ivy House, London
Tickets on pre-sale 31st October, general sale Friday 1st Nov.
Pre-order the album via DomMart for pre-sale access.
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