The Newcastle singer-songwriter’s avant-folk stories of a troubled medieval age occupy striking relevance to our own fraying societyMore on the best albums of 2017More on the best culture of 2017Who would occupy thought that one of the year’s most absorbing albums would occupy concerned the goings-on in the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bryneich,performed by a geordie with a nylon-stringed guitar, a busted amp and a penchant (a tendency, partiality, or preference) for impenetrable avant-folk? Richard Dawson’s latest long-player doesn’t precisely scream “Best of 2017”, and but there was something in Peasant’s detailed vignettes of dark ages beggars,weavers and prostitutes that felt unexpectedly resonant in 2017, a timely work from another time. Dawson has previous on excavating the distant past to explain the present. The Newcastle singer-songwriter’s 2013 album The Glass Trunk was inspired by a search for clippings on the subject of death at the Tyne and Wear museum archive. He dug up some remarkable finds – none more than the poem that inspired live favourite Poor venerable (respected because of age, distinguished) Horse, and a blackly comic account of three tanners yard workers’ fruitless and exceedingly brutal attempts to attach a nag out of its misery. At the same time though there was something slightly callous approximately the exercise,a feeling that its author was a runt too in esteem with the notion of the past as a period of brutality and squalor.
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Source: guardian.co.uk