His are uneasy songs for uneasy times, and 2020 has been likened to a Ken Loach film, voicing horror at the sort of thing we now regard as routine – exploitative working conditions, the dismantling of the welfare state, flooding – but from the perspective of ordinary people just bumbling along. Released last month, it found him spinning tales of modern Britain from skeins of detail. Dawson’s emotions would cast no obvious shadow until, suddenly, his guitar-playing might turn ugly and he might yell the words “Ironic! Gold! Glitter!” as the drums beat mercilessly along.Įveryday incongruities, especially those that speak volumes, form the basis of Dawson’s latest, 2020, his sixth solo album. The 38-year-old singer-songwriter might deliver the information in a quavery Newcastle falsetto – alluding, elliptically, to the gentrification of Hackney, to the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (the Moths), the ex-servicemen who once drank here, while praising the amazing value of the craft beer on tap.
Such incongruous details would not feel out of place in the lyrics of a Richard Dawson song. His new drummer and a bassist in a trucker cap look like they have wandered in from two different bands. Behind Richard Dawson, pink with sweat, shimmers a backdrop of gold foil lamé. T he scalloped ceiling in the back room of this erstwhile working men’s club is pebble-dashed with gold glitter.
0 kommentar(er)
