Doors 7.30pm | Tickets £21 | Theatre | Plus Support Faye MacCalman
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Rich(ard) Dawson performs live in the Brewery Arts Theatre to mark the release of his new LP, End of the Middle.
While Dawson is no stranger to big musical ideas, be it opening his 2022 album The Ruby Cord with a world-building 41-minute track or writing epic songs from the perspective of a seed in collaboration with the Finnish experimental rock band Circle, here Dawson dials everything down. “Everything is held back and soft.” By stripping things to a bare bones essence, what is revealed is a remarkably poised, oddly elegant and beautiful collection of songs – unquestionably some of Dawson’s finest work to date.
The title of the new album End of the Middle is a suitably slippery contradiction, one that invites multiple interpretations: Middle-aging? Middle-class? The middle-point of Dawson’s career? The centre of a record? Centrism in general? Polarisation? The possibility of having a balanced discussion about basically anything? Stuck in the middle with you? Middle England? Decide for yourself when the album is released on February 14th 2025.
For a taste of what to expect, check out new single “Polytunnel” below straightaway, it warmly depicts a gardener engaged in the noble, calming, mysterious business of raising vegetables whilst dealing with illness. Despite its pretty, almost breezy folk-pop-esque sound, it appears to hide an altogether deeper darkness. “I think I know what’s happening in the song, but hopefully that’ll be different for each person listening,” Dawson says. “I like that the line ‘Out the gate and down the lane’ – it could mean going down the allotment, or it could mean going somewhere else. Tunnel is obviously a very loaded word. There’s possibly a lot of drama happening outside of the lines of the song…. Or not. It might just be a song about an allotment.”
Opening tonight is Faye MacCalman, a performer, composer-songwriter and improviser on saxophone, clarinet, voice and electronics. Faye fuses experimental songwriting with free-weaving melodies and enveloping rhythms drawing on jazz, folk and rock music inspired by under the surface emotional worlds; playfully merging magical realism with raw realities. In 2023 Faye was selected as artist in residence at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead, and performs as a solo artist and as bandleader of jazz-art-rock adventurers Archipelago, nominated for UK Jazz Act of the Year in the Jazz FM Awards.
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