No stranger to big concepts – his last album, The Ruby Cord, was built around a 41-minute opener, and 2017’s Peasant was sung from the perspectives of inhabitants of the north-east in the dark ages – Britain’s best modern-day folk singer has a tighter focus for his eighth solo album. End of the Middle concentrates the Newcastle artist’s prodigious storytelling talents on several generations of one family, and how patterns of behaviour repeat across them.
In that this conceit allows Dawson to offer a snapshot of ordinary lives in Britain today, it’s close in spirit to the excellent 2020, his stories of life’s quotidian stresses and joys made all the more real by lyrics that reference Zoom meetings, “ham-fisted PowerPoint presentation” best man speeches and advice on energy bills from “Holly and Phil”. Among the tales of finding catharsis on an allotment (Polytunnel), a boy getting into fights at school just as his father once did (Bullies) and a grandmother wondering where the time has gone (Gondola), there are frequent moments of insight, poetry and human warmth. A relatively sparse musical backdrop gives Dawson’s lyrics the space they deserve, with only the occasional squall of clarinet as distraction. A unique talent.
