Head-spinning conclusion to Dawson’s time-travelling trilogy.
Richard Dawson
★★★★
The Ruby Cord
DOMINO. CD/DL/LP
With Peasant in 2017, Dawson entered into a Dark Ages troubadour mindset, mixing the courtly with the gnarly, and conjuring up an atmosphere of The Incredible String Band singing outtakes from The Wicker Man. Then, on the album entitled 2020 – released in 2019 – he picked the bones of present-day existence to boisterous fuzz guitar and unpredictable synths. Now The Ruby Cord catapults us 50 years into the future: the possibilities of withdrawal have enabled an extreme form of solipsism where you only engage with your own imagination, with all the pleasure and pain that implies. At least that’s a broad outline.
The Ruby Cord does not sound so much futuristic as out of time, and some listeners will fall at the first hurdle. But what a hurdle it is. The Hermit, which opens the 80-minute album, clocks in at 41 minutes. It begins with a 10-minute, semi-improvised instrumental with Dawson’s guitar probing around in search of a structure together with long-time collaborators Angharad Davies on violin and harpist Rhodri Davies, and Andrew Cheetham’s brushed and clattering drums.
The song is dense with imagery and allusion, and Dawson’s vocal lines, which include some unexpected dissonances, begin to cohere into a pattern coloured further by empathetic ensemble playing. Once relaxed into the journey, one is faced by a testing section of his solo falsetto singing before the song culminates with Dawson and a small choir of “mates” singing a gorgeous melody, accompanied by strings and glittering harp.
The Hermit takes the storytelling of the bardic tradition and extrapolates it to some distant horizon. It evokes memories of the sprawling, rhapsodic forms of Joanna Newsom’s Ys, and Roy Harper’s 23-minute The Lord’s Prayer on Lifemask. Harper said of that song, “Don’t be scared of it, it’s only a movie”, and the same applies to The Hermit.
Dawson’s singular approach looks at both melodies and lyrics from unusual angles. The chugging rock guitar of The Tip Of An Arrow dives off into free-form sections, and on Thicker Than Water we take a metaphorical and literal journey away from family and into isolation over pretty guitar figures that suddenly blossom into vocal chorales.
Horse And Rider ends the album in typically enigmatic fashion. Dawson sings of the protagonist: “There’s no way back to the world from which she was born/And the only way out is forward and down.” But the sense of unease is tempered by the musicians playing an anthemic tune with a traditional feel, which gives some kind of resolution. Dawson’s approach to making The Ruby Cord was exemplified by his question, “What happens if we push on a bit further?” He’s answered that with one of the most inventive, exploratory albums of the year.
The Ruby Cord is out now, via Domino.
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