INTERVIEW: RICHARD DAWSON

Image by: Sally Pilkington

Where Richard Dawson’s recent albums have often married a big sound to a wide-angle worldview, with End Of The Middle he wanted to make something smaller, quieter and focused on the family. “The last two albums I made were quite grandiose in some ways, though they had their intimacy about them, and I always have a little eye on how my albums will reflect on each other… part of it was just a desire to let the songs be very naked and really put the focus on the lyrics and the melodies as much as possible. And there was also the other side, that I would love the music to sound almost quite weakly. Like it’s just been born and it’s like a newborn goat struggling to its feet.  But also I guess I was thinking about how the world has gone completely batshit crazy, especially the notion of truth – I think it’s so frightening.”

“Within the family home, we’re meant to be the most safe,” Dawson continues, “and this felt like a really useful setting to talk about some other things, the patterns of unhealthy behaviour and violence and unpleasantness – and really nice patterns as well – that get passed down through the generations of a family and then as we start to find our identity those patterns, parental things, are really hard to break or alter.”

I was thinking about how the world has gone completely batshit crazy, especially the notion of truth

Our conversation moves onto the specific versus the universal, and whether the vivid and accurate descriptions throughout the album (the anxiety and depression in Knot, for example) draw on Dawson’s own life, but he demurs. “I think if you read those things in a novel, you might not think that, so maybe it’s about expectations of lyrics…”.

Dawson explains that a lightning bolt did hit his childhood home – his dad had a narrow escape – which serves as the inspiration behind album opener Bolt. “I was already thinking about a family, this idea of the typical English family home – I love this idea of like a giant hand shining a searchlight into the corners of the doll’s house and then this thing that happened with the lightning strike… It’s kinda perfect.”

One of the most striking features of the album is the role played by Faye MacCalman, the Newcastle-based reeds player who is all over End Of The Middle, often blasting across tracks in the places where Dawson might once have played an angular guitar solo. “The idea was that she would be these lightning bolts, occasionally appearing out of the blue. I needed something that occupies the space between being quite melodic and refined but also with a free, fiery side.” Starting with notes and suggestions, Dawson goes on to explain that he soon realised she instinctively knew what each track required and he let her get on with it.

The press around End Of The Middle suggests a break of some kind, the end of a phase. While he couldn’t go into details, Dawson explains “I’m already cracking on with the next thing, roughly planning, and even thinking about the thing after that. I just want to keep going, you know?”

Richard Dawson’s new album The End Of The Middle is released by Domino on Friday 14^th February. He plays Gateshead Glasshouse International on Saturday 17^th May.