Album Review: Henki by Richard Dawson

But Richard Dawson , one of few British folk musicians who seems to actually love the isle's oldest folk traditions, rather than writing rock songs with a banjo, offers a rebuttal to that claim on his seventh studio album. The album is a collaboration with Circle , an eclectic and experimental Finnish post-rock band who Dawson once claimed to be his favourite of all time. "It was like being a teenager and suddenly being asked to go onstage with Iron Maiden" he said, of the first time they invited him to perform with them.

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Nobody writes about humanity--our hopes and dreams, obsessions and follies--quite like Richard Dawson. A singer and guitarist from Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England, Dawson works loosely in the folk tradition, though this hardly begins to explain the breadth and eccentricity of his songs. One minute you might find him singing a tale of alcoholic misadventure on a school trip; the next, venturing back to the early medieval kingdom of Bryneich, or hymning the lives of the poor souls packing parcels in an online retail warehouse.

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Photo by Antti Uusimäki Henki by Richard Dawson & Circle Richard Dawson follows his song-writing muse along divergent paths, keeping a keen eye on the storytelling possibilities inherent in song, and lending proceedings a humane, often humorous slant. Following a gripping series of rough-around-the-edges folk-rock albums under his own name, two albums by colorful electronic-pop project Hen Ogledd, and his prolific pandemic duo Bulbils with partner Sally Pilkington, Dawson returns with Henki, a new collaboration with Finnish metal band Circle. There are plenty of precedents for this music among the genres of metal, prog and classic rock, such as Yes and Led Zeppelin, topped up with a healthy dose of Spinal Tap's absurdity.

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