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Contemporary life seems an increasingly fractured thing, multifaceted in ways that can be disconcerting and maddening and frequently dangerous, but also beautiful and hopeful. Richard Dawson is one of the finest chroniclers of this state of existence: his songs follow the spidery faultlines that these fractures create, resulting in exhilarating and sometimes epic journeys to unexpected destinations.
His last three solo albums – Peasant (2017), 2020 (2019) and The Ruby Cord (2022) have mapped an increasingly complex terrain of imagined pasts and dystopian futures, calling on a cast of characters that includes Anglo-Saxon peasants, robot knights, disgruntled pub landlords and schoolboy footballers. Taken as a trilogy, those albums acted as a kind of state-of-the-nation address, only stretched out over the course of a millennium. End of the Middle is a slightly different proposition. Although apparently narrower in its focus, Dawson’s songwriting here is no less ambitious in its startling imagery and idiosyncratic subject matter. Take, for example, the album’s second single, Boxing Day Sales. It’s perhaps the poppiest thing Dawson has ever done (despite Faye MacCalman’s welcome stab of free-jazzy clarinet), but the lyrics are typically Dawsonian, touching on French Connection, synchronised swimming, quilted kimonos. Whereas previously he might have used this kind of setting to take (very legitimate) potshots at commercialism and a lack of individuality, here the tone is softer, more conciliatory. ‘You owe it to yourself,’ runs the refrain: we all have to do what we can to get by, and sometimes that means green amber earrings or an espresso machine.
Dawson is not in the habit of blaming regular people for the societal ills caused by self-serving governments or faceless corporations. The blame in his songs is often implicit in the sorrow or hardship of their sympathetically-drawn protagonists. End of the Middle doubles down on this compassionate strand of Dawson’s writing. If this album has an overarching theme, it is the idea of the average family. He is keenly aware that, in this sense, ‘average’ doesn’t equate to ‘unimportant’ or ‘unremarkable’. His even-handed treatment of regular human beings getting on with their lives is inspired by the Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, the ultimate advocate for the legitimacy of interactions rather than events. Most of these songs have human interaction at their heart, usually in a small-scale, domestic sense. Removals Van, with its tripping, stumbling melody, uses the idea of a house move to examine the importance of shared familial moments and the sometimes fractious relationships between parents and children.
Of course, this being Richard Dawson, it is the specificity of detail that brings these songs to life: the standoff between Noel’s House Party and Gladiators in Removals Van, or the last drops of Blossom Hill in Gondola, a song with an almost baroque prettiness to its guitar work. In contrast, Bullies has a driving, minimal post-rock feel and an expertly crafted switch in narrative voice halfway through. The Question, which starts with a stripped-back, expressionistic guitar solo, is a ghost story where the actual ghost is less important than the real-life events that unfold after its visitation.
Another of Dawson’s great skills is his ability to use unusual perspectives to illuminate facets of daily life which might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Knot describes a wedding from the point of view of a guest suffering from poor mental health: the narrator loses themself in vol-au-vents and corned beef pie, champagne and Jaegerbombs, while the ridiculousness of the situation crystallises in the form of a golden retriever in a bow tie, puke on the bar, dad dancing. At either end of the song are images of the natural world, and the possibility of some form of healing, while the sheets of distortion that lead to the conclusion feel genuinely cleansing. These unexpected perspectives go hand in hand with Dawson’s ability to create multiple and often ambiguous layers in otherwise simple songs. First single, Polytunnel, is a song about allotments, but also about the importance of shared experience and friendship and nature, and about ageing and death, and perhaps half a dozen other things.
Perhaps the album’s richest and strangest moments come in its first and last songs. Opener Bolt is more symbolically loaded than anything else here, telling the story of a house struck by lightning, but conversely, it is also the most identifiably autobiographical moment on the whole record. The music has a noticeably darker shade to it, hinting at the influence of former Dawson collaborators Circle or the more minimal side of Japanese experimental metallers Boris. Andrew Cheetham’s drumming has an insistence here, which softens as the album progresses. The final track, More Than Real, is a more obvious departure. Vistas of synth open out, Dawson croons a technicolour ballad of parenthood and regret and hope, and midway through, his voice is replaced by that of his partner Sally Pilkington, who co-wrote the song. It’s unashamedly sentimental, and perhaps the most moving thing in all of Dawson’s catalogue. End of the Middle, as its name suggests, might mark the closing chapter of a particular phase in Dawson’s career, but it does so with panache and potency, proof that he is still the most gifted and generous of songwriters.
End of the Middle (14th February 2025) Domino Records
