Friday, December 6, 2019

album review: '2020' by richard dawson

Yeah, this one has been long in coming.

Okay, some context: I first became aware of Richard Dawson in 2017 for his album Peasant, which got the sort of critical acclaim that prompted me to take a look at his back catalog - hell, at some point I'm fairly certain he was added to my schedule and I just ran out of time to cover him, because 2017 was like that. But I checked out his early albums and... well, I've always been a little uncomfortable with the term 'outsider artist', but especially on those early projects full of half-formed, ramshackle folk music with oblique lyrics and awkward singing, it did feel appropriate. And it wasn't my thing - not helped by the fact that his songs and albums ran long - but I got the impression that if things tightened up I could get into it. And going back to Peasant now, it has the feel of pastoral folk music from the middle ages run through warped contortions both in the writing and composition, taking the odd romanticism to which some treat that particular era of history and making it as realistically grotesque as possible across its fables. Which... okay, I appreciate deconstruction and satire and even this era of history, but I struggled to see what deeper point he was trying to make about that era, and despite slightly more conventional structures, I wasn't really loving the music enough to go for the deep dive.

So when his newest album 2020 was proclaimed his most accessible project to date and one moving its satire to the modern age to a lot of critical acclaim... look, I've seen a ton of people love this album and I do like some folk weirdness, so what did we get on 2020?

So this is exactly the the sort of album that I'm not at all surprised that we got from Richard Dawson, because it basically bumps up his deconstructive social commentary to the modern era for the shuddering, synth-accented, quaking folk music that's unmistakably British in its reference points but just as potent and relevant worldwide. It's literate, it's textured, it's fiercely political... and even though I'd argue in broad strokes I agree with the majority of its arc, it's not an album that I found myself wanting to revisit. In a way I'm reminded of albums like Pure Comedy by Father John Misty, or the longer and less tolerable work from Mark Kozelek: smart writing that's making a poignant point, but even if I'd argue this is easily Richard Dawson's most accessible and approachable project to date, there's something about the framing and execution that just hits me in an odd way that I'm not sure I like. 

So let's start with the content and say this: I get it. To keep in simple, Richard Dawson is taking many of the ideas built from Peasant and adjusting the framing to the uncomfortably near-future: grounding everything in vividly humanistic and borderline grotesque detail to highlight the human toll of the modern age for the people at the very bottom. But where much of the framing on Peasant was from the third person, a little more pastoral and quaint to manufacture distance from the messy scenes on display, 2020 is almost entirely told from observations in the first person, on a project that with every song emphasizes smallness and how little power you really have. And I'll give Dawson a lot of credit for his attention to detail in showing exactly how people shudder, show real weakness, and break in these cases, be it the omnipresent strain of late capitalism and breaking bureaucracy to very flawed relationships that show people trying - and mostly failing - to trust and be good to each other. And while the socially charged songs are the most immediately striking - the opening track 'Civil Servant' is a scathing indictment at the hapless staffer who has to take the calls from folks who have lost their Disability Allowance, and 'Fulfillment Center' doesn't pull any punches thrashing Amazon's exploitative work practices in their distribution centers, what's more revealing are cuts like 'The Queen's Head', a more subtle picture showing a community's pub flooded by slowly rising sea levels and how civil order fractures, a similar picture sliding into the background neuroses of 'Jogging'. And that's not to ignore the more personal stakes of songs like 'Two Halves', where a child's shame at a football loss is shown opposite an over-competitive father struggling to manage his emotions, or on 'Heart Emoji' showing the messy collapse of a relationship where cheating was exposed amidst a craven mess of distrust and deeply buried anger. 

But it's hard not to feel like there's more of a focus on the small-scale human ugliness than the shifting or breaking systems that likely should bear the brunt of the blame - this is not an album that comes close to inspirational or galvanizing, where the break point for said civil servant is a desire to stay home and play Call Of Duty, which is sold as though it means the world... but likely never will. And that's the fatalistic side of the album's subtext that really rubs me the wrong way, a lot of creeping dread and defense mechanisms but the running implication they're never quite enough - the most quietly optimistic song in text and subtext is 'Fresher's Ball', as a father drops his daughter off at university and must now grapple with newfound loneliness, but he's confident she'll be alright. And then after a brief interlude of unsettled ambient sound, the final track... is 'Dead Dog in an Alleyway', where a homeless man is beaten to death by football hooligans and his body is left to bleed out until the police arrive too late, a return to barbarism to which it seems like Dawson believes we won't escape, given the parallels to cuts like 'Beggar' on Peasant. And yes, that's an evocative, brutal image, but I question what that deep-seated pessimism adds, because when you pair that with detail so precise, it can start to feel voyeuristic and I start feeling like I'm watching a Larry Clark movie like Ken Park. At least when Father John Misty made Pure Comedy, there was a fragment of desperate romanticism to aim for something more, and you could tell Kozelek at least tried to cherish the smallest moments amidst his nihilistic pettiness on songs like 'I Love Portugal' and 'Ben's My Friend'. Dawson seems like more of a realist in stripping away any chance of aspiration, but a nihilistic wallow in despair is not something I want to revisit with any frequency.

And when I'm still lukewarm on Richard Dawson's sound at best, that doesn't really help either. Part of this is still his voice: herky jerky, cracking and barely on-key at the best of times and with a falsetto I just do not like that sounds both too thin and loud simultaneously, even if he's become a better singer it still feels like he's not particularly comfortable as a singer, which of course is part of the point on an album like this but his refusal to play into his deeper register consistently or use more multi-tracking is exasperating. And that might as well play to the song structures as well, because the majority of these cuts are over five minutes and often spend more time shuffling through wonky grooves patterns further intended to discomfort the audience rather than play to some of his best ever hooks. And of course I get why he's doing it - the entire album is about an oppressive dystopia, and this only amplifies that feeling, driven home the most on 'Fulfillment Center' clocking over ten minutes. But I'm going to bring back my three P's for great political art, and while Dawson has a lot of precision and can occasionally bring real power on the best moments like the synth foundation that explodes effectively through the fractured acoustics on 'The Queen's Head', his populist streak is hit-and-miss, in the right place lyrically but in execution still very much in his freak folk comfort zone. And how much this is augmented by the synths and some of the percussion choices is also kind of hit-and-miss - I'm not wild about how programmed the oily, clicking backdrop of 'Civil Servant' can feel, the hollowed flutters of synth don't compliment the pseudo-noir groove of 'Heart Emoji' at all, and as much as I like the surprisingly heavy and pummeling grind of the guitar grooves of 'Jogging' and 'Dead Dog in an Alleyway', dropping in a gummy film with wonky synthesized vocals that flattens the bombast in the former and shuddering warbles behind the latter just never allows the deeper darkness to take off - a shame, the hook and especially the basswork on that song is great. Similar case for 'Black Triangle', already the most out of place song on the album thanks to its UFO paranoia disguising deeper angst but then a lingering implication that there might be some true to it all, but factor in what could have been a great synth-backed groove that changes up multiple times before it can coalesce well and I'm left hearing a lot of misspent potential. Hell, when Richard Dawson gets out of his own way, we get cuts like 'Two Halves' has a surprisingly bouncy hook that sticks remarkably well, or the slight beauty of 'Fresher's Ball', that's just gentle elegant acoustics and the barest of keyboard touches around the warm percussion that builds its organic swell really effectively.

But as a whole... look, I've been sitting on this reviews for weeks now trying to best contextualize 2020, because it's absolutely a project I can respect and will pick up an audience for which the off-kilter sound and cutting lyrics will resonate more. But between the interminable length, the frustrating miasma of its thematic arc, and how I'm still not confident Dawson is playing to his compositional strengths, it's an album I respect more than I like, which is why I'm giving it a solid 7/10 and a recommendation, but a cautious one. It's certainly Dawson's most accessible album in terms of sound and subject matter so if you're looking for a point to get onboard this is probably it... but don't be precisely surprised if it rubs you in an odd way - just saying.

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