1000 Tiny Birds

Richard Dawson - The Ruby Cord (2022)

2023-01-01

An album that is an hour and 20 minutes is often, rightly, daunting. Doubly so when the overwhelming factor in that is a single 41 minute track. And so it is with The Ruby Cord, Richard Dawson’s latest album. I cannot claim to be familiar with Dawson’s work, but it’s a new year, a new me, a new outlook on life. Ish. As I decide that New Year’s Day is the opportunity for a slightly hungover walk in nature, I need an appropriate soundtrack. The Ruby Cord, beyond its opening ballast, is generally well-proportioned, a sprawling folk album which recalls William Doyle’s more pastoral works of Your Wilderness, Revisited at times. Album highlight The Tip Of The Arrow shifts effortlessly from its light fingerpicking to its insistent electric march and beyond. It is up to the listener how much they invest in the lyrics of Roman villas and Isagog on tracks like this. On The Fool, Dawson sings more evidently of the rise and fall of a relationship, without becoming overly explicit. An album that will probably reveal more of itself on a more careful examination, but equally capable of simply being on, The Ruby Cord probably won’t enter frequent rotation, but I can see myself revisiting it on a lazy Sunday.