Richard Dawson
End Of The Middle
(Weird World)
★★★★

FOLLOWING his epic sc-fi album The Ruby Cord, Richard Dawson returns with a new record. 

“I wanted this album to be small-scale and very domestic,” the Newcastle-born singer-songwriter says. Musically stripped back and subdued, the set focuses on different generations of a middle-class English family. 

Like his superb longplayer 2020, seemingly mundane aspects of life become imbued with meaning and emotion. Gondola finds an old woman wishing for no more regrets: “I never got to go to Venice/ And how many summers have I left?/ I still can’t believe I’m a grandma.” Elsewhere, the protagonist of Bullies interrupts a Zoom call with an important client (Majestic Wine, if you’re asking) to take a call from his son’s school because “he's been scrapping again.”

Strangely compelling and compassionate, Dawson has become an important chronicler of our times.

Yazz Ahmed
A Paradise In The Hold
(Night Time Stories)
★★★★

A JAZZ album that takes its inspiration from the culture and history of Bahrain, A Paradise In The Hold is a daring, inventive set.

Visiting the Gulf kingdom in 2014, British-Bahraini trumpet player and composer Yazz Ahmed was particularly struck by the wedding drumming songs and pearl diving laments she heard. There’s a definite aquatic mood to many tracks, her band’s liberal use of the vibraphone and fender Rhodes bringing to mind the jazz fusion of Return To Forever’s legendary 1972 debut. 

While UK jazz acts don’t seem to paint on such a large canvas as artists like Kamasi Washington or Norway’s Jan Garbarek (check out the latter’s epic Rites from 1998), Ahmed doesn’t seem to have got the memo: her free-flowing music offers up countless different sounds, ideas and emotions to get lost in.

A fantastic voyage. 

The Murder Capital
Blindness
(Human Season)
★★★★

I’M a big fan of The Murder Capital’s 2023 record Gigi’s Recovery. And I’m far from alone — the album, top heavy with dark post-punk anthems, received lots of great reviews.

With opener Moonshot a full frontal aural assault, Blindness feels like a different beast to the Dublin five piece’s previous release. There is an intensity and bloody mindedness to the set. And it’s very loud, arguably unlistenable in places. 

But they continue to write some great songs. The taut Death Of A Giant was written after the band paid their respects to Shane McGowan as his funeral procession travelled down Pearse Street in the Irish capital. Elsewhere leadsinger and lyricist James McGovern sounds like The Cribs on the scuzzy indie track A Distant Life, while on the slow-burning Love Of Country he takes aim at dangerous flag shaggers.