April 2025
Weird Records—WEIRD166LP
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
A little more than two years ago, English songwriter Richard Dawson released The Ruby Cord, the final album in a trilogy that looked at English life in the Middle Ages (Peasant, 2017), the present (2020, 2019), and the distant future (The Ruby Cord, 2022). For the most part, Dawson writes for acoustic instruments, and his work embraces folk-music traditions while subverting and reimagining them.
Dawson’s newest, End of the Middle, is at first glance less thematically grand than the trilogy. He told the New Statesman, “It zooms in quite close up to try [to] explore a typical middle-class English family home.” The stories reach across generations to look at how people’s choices carry forward and resonate.
The instrumentation in Dawson’s recordings is often spare, but there’s complexity beneath the surface. End of the Middle is perhaps his most straightforward presentation of his songs. Dawson plays acoustic guitar and bass behind his voice, with drummer Andrew Cheetham accompanying him. Faye MacCalman occasionally inserts some lines on clarinet.
“Bolt” begins with an arpeggio on acoustic guitar and a snare drum. The song is based on Dawson’s memory of a bolt of lightning hitting his house:
I stand bewildered at the telephone, hanging from the wall.
Now a flower of charred and twisted beige.
It was only a wrong number.
I just hung up the call.
That was so close. You were so close.
I almost recognized the voice.
Dawson describes the frightening power of the event and hints at the forces beyond our understanding (“a stupendous burst of all-seeing light”). He also sets the stage for stories about the changes in people’s lives that are less dramatic but lasting.
Americans will recognize the daily sameness of the woman’s life in “Gondola,” even if they don’t catch the references to daytime TV shows in England. “I wish I had gone onto higher education,” she says at one point and laments that her “dreams died like dolphins in a net.” As the song ends, there’s a tiny glimpse of light. The narrator says her granddaughter got her license and she wants to buy a car so she can “take her on holiday / make memories before it’s all too late.”
The dissonant chords in “Bullies” create an air of tension and pain for Dawson’s story of a man’s memories of being bullied in school. He describes the immediate impact (“I just tried to keep my head down / but ended up messing up my GCSEs”), as well as a remembered kindness from a teacher (“Though mainly thanks to the encouragement of Mrs. Kovacic / I managed an A and a B in English”). MacCalman’s clarinet scronks give voice to the narrator’s anguish during his school years.
Dawson’s sharp eye for the right details gives his stories life. A man fighting depression (“After I awake, all my senses start to ache”) attends a wedding in “Knot,” and the experience only makes him feel worse. Consumerism rears its ugly head on “Boxing Day Sales,” and the people waiting in line engage in random conversations. A family comes together on “Removals Day” to help their son move into a new house. In addition to the usual moving-day headaches, the son must deal with his father, who has fallen into alcoholism.
The sparse instrumentation requires Dawson’s guitar playing to set the atmosphere and tone of the songs. He provides simple, strummed chords where appropriate, but punctuates songs in more pronounced ways when the mood calls for it. MacCalman helps fill things out and reinforces the spirit of the tunes.
Sally Pilkington, who has appeared on other albums with Dawson, plays keys and sings on “More Than Real.” Dawson sings the opening verses, in which the narrator describes his reaction to his daughter’s birth and pledges to avoid the mistakes his father made. Pilkington sings in the voice of his daughter, visiting her dying father in the hospital. The song closes the album on a bittersweet but hopeful note.
Dawson recorded End of the Middle at Blank Studios in Newcastle upon Tyne, and the sound is detailed and intimate. The instruments register clearly, and Dawson’s vocals are sharply centered and full. Optimal Media pressed the LP, and my copy was flat, with quiet backgrounds.
Dawson’s tenor and falsetto take some time to appreciate, but he is an expressive singer whose performances let him portray the characters he has created. End of the Middle is executed simply, but the profundity and emotional pull of the music shine through.
Note: The album cover shows Richard Dawson’s name, but with the last three letters of his name etched out. There’s also a statement in parentheses beneath his name, “Just Rich,” which suggests he might want to be known as Rich from now on. However, the articles about the release of the album, both in the US and in England, make no mention of the name change, so I’m referring to him here as Richard.
. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com
