Supernormal 2025 part 2

Nadeem Din-Gabisi, dressed in a lion mask like Tiger Mendoza’s cousin, may be Saturday’s highlight. This low-slung Brit-hop set (key reference: Roots Manuva) is glorious, and the lyrics eruditely explore everything that is good and bad about this country - the track title ‘Pub Lunch’ sums that up, and it sounds something like one of the lighter productions on Skull Disco. He samples the Parry’s ‘Jersualem’ and even quotes Morrissey - if he wanted an example of something from Britain that’s both great and an absolute embarrassment, he hit the bullseye. 

The Supernormal cabaret makes a welcome return, and this year we get lip-synching divas, absurd comedic turns, and some surprisingly earnest and lovely Moroccan song, but MC Ginny Lemon is still the highlight, managing to make slurring a tune with a fish on your head seem like the funniest and most subversive act ever. 

Kalkin are a highly original drums and fiddle duo. Their first number has snatches of jigs but tears along relentlessly, as if the film Speed had been set in a folk club. There is also a whiff of Velvet Underground in a churning mid-paced track, but they peak with a wistful Gavin Bryars-type exploration accompanying a 6-note piano loop, which finds new angles on every repetition, some murky and dark, some bright and soaring. Meat Strap on Friday cover equally broad terrain, sometimes fragmented funk we christen Wacko Pastorius, sometimes like a sashimi chef slicing up Slint with James Blood Ulmer seasoning. They also have inscrutable dedications, including “for the man who invented athlete’s foot”. They add a double bass player, then a flautist - we leave wondering whether they'll continue to expand exponentially and burst the Red Kite tent. Zoh Amba is even more unpredictable, a few opening minutes of solo sax skronk acting as a Wire-reader's Trojan horse to sneak some acoustic songs somewhere between Michaelle Shocked and Neil Young ont the main stage. 

Rainham Sheds invert the Lixenberg Performer-Audience Gambit. Their set starts with a hand-stitched alt groove which is partly like 90s Fall, but mostly like a bladdered and belligerent Bis, whilst vocalist Kate Mahony rolls through the crowd towards the stage with a chair she is part wearing, part fighting. When she gets to a mic, she screeches and wails like an ill-tempered baby, before letting the audience take over the honours. This is pop music as late-night pub car park argy-bargy, terribly messy but open to all. 

Coffin Mulch on Sunday play death metal, and they like playing death metal, and we like hearing them play death metal, because they play death metal really well. Sometimes, you don’t need to do anything new, you just need to do it monstrously loudly. Contrast this with the slightly more stately Meatdripper, a stoner/doom quartet who can hit quite a surprising groove: have you ever had the urge to shimmy your hips whilst the loud overtones trouble your bowels? In true Supernormal fashion, as we enjoy this onslaught a man in a Greggs onesie outside the tent is helping someone dressed as a tea table rearrange pink wafers. Probably they were dislodged running away from furniture scourge Kate Mahony. 

We’re expecting Big Farmer, a band featuring members of Supernormal’s build crew, to be a good honest garage racket, but although they have a hardcore heart, there’s a lot of wit and space on display. The nearly spoken vocals lean slightly towards Idles, but they’re less gruff, and the second number’s delivery sounds weirdly like Eddie Argos, if Art Brut took more cues from Fugazi.  

Brìghde Chaimbeul plays the Scottish smallpipes, and although all compositions are sourced from Skye, she makes intriguing arrangement decisions. One piece is so slow it is probably counted in beats-per-month, whilst another swirls round and round a couple of motifs like bellows-blown techno. Is that a smoke machine wreathing her head or mists magically transported from a Munro? We don’t know enough to say where the trad tunes end and Chaimbeul’s inventions begin, but we know this is exceptionally beautiful - and being blasé about boundaries is where we came in, right? 

If we’re being true to ourselves, Supernormal is our favourite festival. Looking out for others, we strongly advise you all attend next year. Make it happen! Hell, it even only rained for about 20 minutes... 

Scud Missive

I have now reviewed Supernormal so many times I think I might take a rest next year and let someone else have a crack...course, I'll still attend, it's the best festival ever.

SUPERNORMAL, Braziers Park, 1-3/8/25 

“Come onstage with me if you want to get out of the rain”. When did you ever hear a festival act propose that? But, it's Sunday lunchtime and Loré Lixenberg is opening her performance space to the damp people of Braziers Park, which just about sums up Supernormal, a festival where the line between artist and audience is often blurred, broken, or moshed into oblivion. We should mention that Lixenberg is a highly trained operatic mezzo-soprano and her invitation arose whilst she was interviewing a random member of the public in a sprechgesang style (discovery: the phrase “that’s so bloody typical” is astonishing when delivered like Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder). The interviewee is called Scud, and is an actual legend, talking with wit and passion about the value of public libraries, going full Phil Minton in an impromptu bout of vocal improv, and telling stories of inventing parkour (disputed) and discovering punk as a nipper. Punk acts feature elsewhere this weekend, but the whole event embodies punk’s central tenets “Make it happen!”, “Look out for each other”, and “Be true to yourself”, and is as incredible as ever. 

Our Friday starts with Distraxi, who sounds pleasingly like someone howling with rage whilst faxing a kazoo, before we visit The Vortex for the first time. This wonky shed space hosts plenty of multimedia business over the weekend, but the simple show by The Panama Papers is one of the best. The music is mostly lugubrious sax and electronics, with some low intoned vocals somewhere between Swans and Crash Test Dummies, but the magic is in the slideshow projected behind them, in which the Dept of Improvised Investigations hilariously claims that noise and improv are a front or tax dodge – can selling 20 home-made tapes be a viable business model?  

Rory Salter suggests it can, perhaps, because the Barn stage is so packed we can’t see what on earth he’s doing, but we love the drifting tones that sound by turns like Snap, Crackle & Pop doing plumbing in Twin Peaks, a Woookiee crèche, and To Rococo Rot making balloon animals.  

Folk is a large part of Supernormal, tapping into the spirit of homegrown rebellion that’s existed for centuries. The Charmers are a coven folk quintet with a “Song for the dykes...a spell for the banished”. Milkweed perform a cosmic folk horspiel based on an Ulster Cycle tale which we admittedly can’t follow, but the fuzzy rustic lope is a delight. They introduce a pair of vocalists for one passage, who turn out to be Bridget & Kitty, from the Round Table folk club in London. They perform unaccompanied duets in Braziers House on Saturday which are unfussy and beautifully controlled and crystalline, a world away from that theatrical barleymow “folk-singer accent” we’ve all heard. That an apparently unrelated song is dedicated to Palestine without any stretch shows the communicative power of these old compositions.  

If folk music is earthy, immediate, and deeply bloodthirsty, Gorgon Vomit are a folk band, being an excellently intense old-school metal pummel party, with guitars whinnying like rabid Kazakh horses. They have a Jamaican vocalist, and track names like ‘Babylon Detonator’, but this actually makes very little difference – possibly because metal is universal and inclusive of everyone, and possibly because you can never hear the lyrics, anyway.  Headbanging with dreads makes you look like a metal Medusa, though, so props for that.  

Quieter pleasures are on offer, though, like Judith Hamann whose wordless vocals and cello are ECM ambience meets Arvo Pärt meets a gate swinging in the wind. Slow bowing like a calm but wintry sea alternates with quick light taps on the neck, hypnotically.  

A Widget is something small, oddly shaped, but useful, which fits this band, featuring a guitarist from Big Joanie, and our own Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani on drums. They make a strangely lopsided funk pop, somewhere between ESG and Hall & Oates, with one tune even sounding like a cheeky Chic. The vocals are blokey and spoken, but with a wry warmth taking us to the sunny side of The Streets. They’re a pier-end, market-stall British version of a knowing post-post-punk groove band - Elsie Tanner Soundsystem, anyone? 

There's another local win on Sunday, when Oxford’s improv hero Pat Thomas duets with drummer Dan Johnson, eschewing keys in favour of...maybe a tablet? All we can see is Pat sitting studiously in a beret like a French professor at a ludicrously vast table. Regardless of how the noises are generated, they sound fantastic, electronic chitters intertwining with skittering drums. Later in the set the beats get chunkier and we are strafed with blurts and clatters – this is probably what it’s like to play Donkey Kong from inside one of the barrels. 

En Creux is the solo work of Lucia H Chung, a London-based Taiwanese artist, with no-input mixer. Listen for a few seconds and it’s just static and crackle; listen for two minutes and spotty rhythms emerge; after 10 we hear classic electro grooves crossed with manic squeaks, like Egyptian Lover rogering a bouncy castle. Remember Eddie Large’s routine about celebs starting their cars? Imagine that covered by Autechre.

Abstraction is physical not aural at the BRUK UP dance workshop. It’s fascinating to learn about the avant-dancehall moves – think a middle ground between breakdance, the Thriller video, and trying to cross a ropebridge whilst wankered – but it seems Nightshift doesn’t have as many shoulder muscles as the instructor... 

Given its ostensibly inclusive can-do nature, it’s a surprise you don’t see more physically disabled punk performers, as this music comes from spirit and rage, not the corporeal (with the occasional exception of blood alcohol content). Sublux are a churning hardcore band fronted by two wheelchair users, one of whom has a proper incandescent shriek, and the other of whom has a little machine that makes bleepy noises almost without cessation, whether a song is playing or not. Feral. 

Soundart Radio’s shack allows anyone to sign up and broadcast sounds online, and through small speakers near the main gate. Counter-intuitively, the shows that work the best are those that veer away from Supernormal styles: local noise artist Plague Arish layers up some excellent tape hisses and hums, with thudding submerged rhythms that sound like a helicopter trying to take off in a blancmange, but draws a sparse audience, whereas a handstand competition and Vengaboys tunes get the crowds going. Context is everything, we guess. 

Paper Money

I wasn't best happy with this review. It's all fine, but I'm not sure I captured the last band very well, and teetered too much between liking and disliking the opener. Still, it's Supernormal this weekend, and I have a review pass, so expect a very long review before too long!

DAILY TOLL/ MYSTERY BISCUIT/ FIVER, OMS, Library, 11/7/25 

It’s like a game you might play after Christmas dinner, describe Fiver without using the word “Nirvana”. The solution, saying “”Mudhoney, might be considered gamesmanship and cause Granny to stomp off to the sherry decanter in a huff, but it’s actually a smart move, because Fiver’s take on US grunge has a rootsier, warmer heart that aligns them with the second in command in Seattle’s 90s army. There are even a couple of needling atonal moments which recall Dinosaur Jr, though in fairness, there are also times when Fiver remind us what side of the Atlantic they’re from, delivering bouncy rock somewhere between Wildhearts with a healthier lifestyle and Therapy? without the library cards. Inverting the adage, Fiver tonight suggest that the destination is more important than the journey, and to get to pleasingly chunky climaxes and rousing choruses we have to start each song with slightly clunky, chugging rhythms.  

Mind you there’s chugging and there’s chugging. Forget sub-Oasis pedestrian rockers, think of the steady heartbeat of John Lee Hooker, the relentless greasy grooves of ZZ Top, and the sleek kraut repetition of Can. Mystery Biscuit chug like a sleek silver machine rather than a rumbling old banger, painting bright Edgar Froese synth lines over modern psych tunes. They are experts at knowing when to build, and whenever it feels as though the rhythms couldn’t get more intense Marc Burgess switches from keys to second guitar and the music soars even higher. Perhaps the best track tonight is a slower burn, featuring a long recording of poet e e cummings, which is great with a capital G (somewhat ironically). 

Australia’s Daily Toll seem like the sort of band who’d appreciate a gag about the orthographical preferences of Modernist writers, they have a bookish indie air which makes one think of hand-illustrated C90s of Peel sessions and annotated paperbacks. Although their opening number swims into view from a miasma of bowed bass, their vintage introspective indie isn’t aggressively lofi, but neither is it prettily twee and toothless. Perhaps the best reference point is Yo La Tengo at their subtlest, with a touch of Mazzy Star around the glistening guitar, in handmade Sebadoh wrapping. Despite harking back to a very specific era, there’s plenty of variation, from a surprisingly insistent Jah Wobble bassline in one number to a bit of Dry Cleaning recitation in another, and even a studiously rocking cousin of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. Their name evokes enrvating chores, but this inventive band is quietly invigorating. 

Ganja Crew

The last of the latest batch of LFTWY pieces. I rather like this one, though it does very slightly poke fun at other contributors to the zine.

LADYTRON – 604 (Invicta Hi-Fi)

We probably all have a phonobiography, a list of music that is intrinsically tied to certain eras in our lives. We read a lot of that in this very zine, records that spun as writers met their spouse, recovered from measles, or finished Manic Miner, discs dropped like markers on the Google Maps of their own history. Well, the past is a foreign county, LP Hartley reckoned (in between fly fishing and making jam, probably, I’ve done no research), so why not a country I’ve never visited? One where I don’t even know the currency or the approximate average rainfall: an Azerbaijan of times past, let’s say. 

So, the other day I went into the charity shop where one could get 10 CDs for a fiver - which is really too many for a deal, but I can rarely walk away from them - including 604, Ladytron’s debut album released in February 2001. I have never heard this record before, and have only the vaguest memories of hearing a track or two by them in the past, and I’ll type this review live as I listen for the first time.  Warning: may not include full sentences. Or full sense. What we're gonna do right here is go Baku, way Baku, Baku into time. 

mu-tron: Stomping descending motif.  Wiggly pre-wub bass tones.  Layers of treacly synth, a bit like a Add N To (X). Atonal elements.  An almost melancholic stately melody line on top, hints of Aphex. This is great, actually. 

discotraxx: What language was that?  It would be cool if it were Azerbaijani, but It was probably Bulgarian, judging by the fact the vocalist, Mira Aroyo is from there, as Wikiedia tells me.  Must stop checking Wikipedia, this temporal foreign country doesn’t have Ordnance Survey. Anyway, adding Marilyn Monroe-as-a-girl vocals changes the vibe, not yet sure whether I like that as much. Cantering bassline with a Bangelis vibe (that’s Vangelis that slaps harder, FYI).  

another breakfast with you: Telephone type noises, reminding me of that B12 track ‘Telefone 529’ (I’m allowed to look that up, don’t write in). Thin organ.  you can hear the live playing in the topline, it’s not quantised. Sort of like half a Madonna song. 

CSKA sofia: I guess I’m not allowed to look up what those letters mean, but I guess Sofia is the Bulgarian capital, not some girl. Kitsch instrumental with Farfisa-like tones and non-dance drum machine parts.   

the way that I found you: Simple uninflected but slightly breathy vocals make this like Broadcast, without the VHS horror and art archivism.  Simple romance for consumers. 

paco!: Clearly an homage to Are You being Served: “4th floor, electronica, fake antiques, and lingerie”, which is a rum mix. Nice thin bongo rhythm, glides mechanically but smoothly, like a long shopping centre escalator. 

commodore rock: The title makes me thing of ‘Computer Club’ by Datarock, though perhaps Commodore Rock is in the navy (the capitalisation is pretty random on the sleeve, so I have no idea). Proto-techno gyrations, the first time this LP has made me feel like dancing. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes advertising jingle by Model 500. French-accented spoken vocals remind me of Dr Calculus (see previous LFTWY article, if you know what’s good for you). 

ZMEYKA: Violin scrapes, and interesting background noises. Not in tune, or even noticeably related to what’s happening up front. Reminds me of MES methods, and it makes what might be a slightly generic eletro plod more interesting. 

playgirl: Tapping into that sort of Barbarella wide-eyed innocent sexiness. Bit dated, to be honest, but still no harm done. The chords cycle comfortably, it’s decent, but a bit static and thin on ideas – compare this with Stereolab’s take on 60s chintz, and it loses. 

I’m with the pilots: Shimmying sassy little bassline.  Sounds like it could be a Christine Aguilera track. Sprechgesang vocals, wry and aloof, like Black Box Recorder, though this doesn’t have the supercilious humour. 

this is our sound: Title is valid, they do sound like this (I mean, there’s a paradox there, but you get the gist) – perambulatory paced synth bass, simple drums, airy ditty vox. 

he took her to a movie: Unashamedly ‘The Model’. Like, not even trying to hide it at all. Title is most of the lyrics. Warhol faux-simplicity. 

laughing cavalier: Abstract and moody, like something from a Czech art film. Only a minute long, so no time to type any mo- 

lady bird: It’s two words, so maybe it’s about the old US first lady, not the insect. Quite close to a chart pop song, if the buzz and clunk were brightened and smoothed. Hints of Kylie. Nothing wrong with that, mind. Nice synth-glock outro. 

JET AGE: These capitals are driving me mad, I’m spending more time checking these are right than reviewing. Is there a snippet of the percussion breakbeat from ‘Apache’ by Incredible Bongo Band? A more wintry tone than the rest of the album. 

skools out: Quiet and tinny music, with the vocals very loud (are my computer speakers a little broken?  Surely it can’t be as “AM radio on the other side of a sand dune” thin as this.  Oh wait, the bass and mids have come in, as you were). Bassline one is from classic grease rock – I guess because of the titular ref to Alice Cooper (though their music is more elegant, for the most part, this sounds like something Ten Benson would have swiped from some forgotten dumbass protoglam single). There is no hidden track, the 90s are over, fools. 

Well that was quite good fun. I honestly liked the album, but just inspiring this stupid idea for a zine article was worth my 50p - which at the current exchange rate is 1 manat and 14 gapiks (yes, I looked it up...but I kept the mean precipitation as a sweet mystery to uncover another day). 

Ha, Marsupial Star

As promised, here's another from a LFTWY annual round-up. I'm pretty happy with this piece, it makes a valid general observation, whilst still acting as a review of the record itself, and it's pretty concise (there are no word limits at LFTWY, but I still keep myself to a few hundred, I think it's better for all concerned).

KID KOALA – CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME (Ninja Tune) 

You all know what guitarists are like. These blokes – they're always blokes – spend countless hours arguing about technique, studying the minutest elements of their heroes’ performances and attempting to emulate them, giving ability primacy over invention, and being, you know, no fun at all to be with. But, true though this might be, it’s triply true of turntablism fans. I can think of no instrument that is so tied to a narrow clutch of stylistic tropes as DJing and no group of fans that are such a bro-centration of conservatives (listening to deckheads arguing about how vinyl scratching is better than the modern digital version for five minutes is enough to make you long for that sweaty guy in the blues jam lecturing about valve amps). Do a quick search online for great turntable performances and you won’t find sweet musical excerpt, like Eric B clinically exploring a vocal phrase whilst Rakim takes a break on the mic, you won’t find the foundational methods and creations of Grand Wizard Theodore, and you sure as hell won’t find experimenters like Christian Marclay or Otomo Yoshihide. What you’ll find is hundreds of extracts from DMC mixing championships over the years, and a slew of clips in which a DJ does exactly the same things, but just fractionally faster, slicker or, occasionally, whilst standing on their head. More than any other slice of musical life, DJing is intrinsically connected with competition. Scratching isn’t art, it’s athletics. 

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a great DJ record because Kid Koala has technique coming out of his tufty grey ears, and has a crate-digger's sense of a funky rhythm to loop in classic hip-hop style, but he also has exactly zero interest in showing off, and instead a huge desire to intrigue and entertain. You can definitely dance to some of this record – or, at least, nod along whilst slumped in a sofa in the early hours – and ‘Fender Bender’ and ‘Roboshuffle’ aren’t too far from the sort of grooves you might get from DJ Shadow or Cut Chemist, but a lot of the record explores abstraction in a way that’s as close to Martin Tétreault as it is to Grandmaster Flash: check the tiny insectile clicks and chitters of ‘Scurvy’ , or the tiny fludge sounds stacked up on ‘Nerdball’, which are fast as hell and doubtless mindblowingly difficult to pull off, but also a world from the clean cuts that accepted technique requires. Lots of spoken elements are sliced or sped up so intensely that they are disconnected from any meaning, untethered phonemes swarming like flying ants, and when statements are clear, they are normally comical, from the wry knowingness of a Foley artist discussing how to make different noises or a stand-up ridiculing DJs, to the outright gagginess of the two ‘Barhopper’ tracks, which act as surreal lessons in pick-up artistry by jamming together lines form a multitiude of sources.  

The funniest parts of the record require no words at all though. ‘Drunk Trumpet’ sounds exactly as you might imagine, a hilariously woozy attack on a horn sample over a stumbling double bass lope, and I can’t imagine anyone not laughing at the wonky poultry party that is ‘Like Irregular Chickens’. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a brilliant album to play to someone who doesn’t like hip-hop DJing so they can find out what a thoughtful and witty artist can create, but it’s an even better record to play to somebody who likes it too much, just to remind them that creativity is always more important than dexterity. 

Pole Opinion

I have received a new batch of LFTWY issues, so expect 3 old album reviews in quick succession. This is from the 1999 issue. Small but crucial typo from the print version fixed, accuracy fans!

POLE – 2 (Kiff SM) 

The great paradox of dub is that it sounds simultaneously cosmically other-worldly, and entirely organic. For all the toms that sound like they’re being played inside Krakatoa, or the hi-hats that sound like they’re being beamed in from Venus, you can never forget the physical input required to make this music: fingers pushing faders, hands leaping between dials, tape spooling in a battered Echoplex. Although there were plenty of decent records produced in the early 90s’ European digidub micromovement, the slick computer effects lack this earthy ruggedness. A few years later, Stefan Betke, AKA Pole, managed to rough up the smooth digital sheen, not with analogue equipment, but by using a digital device that was lightly shafted (the act name comes from something called a Waldorf 4-pole filter which Betke dropped on the floor, and which started going all wobbly). 

Opener ‘Fahren’ sounds most like Pole's digidub predecessors, and the synth melodica line recalls early Zion Train, but although the music is spacious it is neither ominous nor groovy. You might rightly call this dispassionate clinical music “cavernous”, but it sounds like a surveyor mapping a Victorian culvert, rather than someone lost in a haunted cave. ‘Stadt’ opens with plenty of hisses and crackles, and is superficially similar to the glitch music found on Mille Plateaux records around the same time, but it still manages to retain the ghost of a reggae riddim. 

‘Streit’ opens with a squitty little rhythmic twitch, the sound of a salivatory gland wired up to a dot matrix printer. Theres a slithering two-note bassline worming through the track, but again, you’d be hard pressed to skank to this one. There are equally unrhythmic strands of percussive noises on ‘Huckepack’ (which apparently means piggyback in German, but in my mind it will always be the Teutonic variant of vintage dance craze the hucklebuck). Here a tiny recurrent strand of pips – not so much a motif, more a tic – sounds a lot like someone unzipping a tent. 

Other ersatz sounds are the highly treated drum noise on ‘Hafen’ whcih sounds like a piece of cardboard coughing, and the pseudo-organ stabs that hang in off-beat clouds on ‘Weit’ so that listening feels like pushing one’s way through a forest of sere, dead bullrushes that crumble at the touch, whilst higher-pitched notes hang like zombie mosquitoes just out of reach. Except, you know, pleasant. Although the four albums Pole made in this style sound like a dead end now, an evolutionary avenue that died out whilst a more dominant strain mutated into dubstep a few years later and eclipsed its cousins, there’s still more than enough to intrigue on this record, arguably the pick of the four. This is music that doesn’t sound human, but equally doesn’t sound cold and regimented like most music that celebrates its lack of humanity. Warm yet impersonal, flawed yet robotic, there’s nothing else that sounds quite like this on my shelves. 

Axis Of Dawson

Why doesn't hurt Siobhan Fahey if you throw fruit at her?

Banana Armour

NB The word "readers" was inadvertently omitted form the printed version of this review - my error, I fear - so now you can read it in fully idiomatic English for the first time.

RICHARD DAWSON/ ONE LEG ONE EYE, Divine Schism, Cowley Workers Club, 12/6/25  

Anyone who relishes the expansive bleakness of Lankum should immediately seek out Ian Lynch’s side-project One Leg One Eye, a duo focusing on drone, texture, and oppressive sonic fugs. Tonight's excellent set opens with metaphysical observations about the nature of God from sampled Irish voices atop thick, dark tones in a way that recalls the haunting atmospherics of From The Bogs Of Aughiska. Later a cortège-paced folk song is joined by buzzsaw drones and massed organ notes until it sounds like a spectral Luke Kelly guesting on Scott Walker’s Tilt with Charlemagne Palestine on keys. The track – in as much as elements can be extracted from the sonic blanket that overlays us for forty minutes – ends with what might be a bucket of cutlery emptied in a chapel. Both hurdy-gurdy and uillean pipes are played, but anyone expecting Séamus Ennis sprightliness or bouncy jigs will be confused – mind you, with the venue’s mobile disco LEDs twinkling behind the stage giving Phoenix Nights flavours, the whole set feels like a twisted dream. 

If One Leg sketch landscapes with sound, Richard Dawson captures characters with words. His songs are impeccably economical vignettes in the vein of Hemingway stories or the cool illustrations of Joyce’s Dubliners, except they’re almost impossibly English, with opener ‘Polytunnel’ asking “Could you manage a slice of toast/ Or a little bit of soup, my flower?”. Into this celebration of turnip-pulling a tiny line is almost hidden, “It's Karen who was always the green-fingered one”, offering a glimpse into a deep history for the narrator, and so many of tonight’s songs are about hobbyists – allotment diggers, YouTube ufologists, sponsored runners – undertaking tiny activities as if in defiance of a vast, and often unfriendly, world.  

This isn’t a poetry recital, though, and Dawson’s guitar playing is as fascinating as it is adept, swapping between elegant picking and crunchy abstraction like a hybrid of Davey Graham and Gary Lucas. Those who have trouble with his voice would find that the Dawson mannerisms – argue amongst yourselves whether they’re unconscious tics or a stylistic signature – even more pronounced tonight, especially the octave-leaping swoops to strangled falsetto or husky chest voice. But, like Dylan, he swaps melodic fluency for dramatic power, with ‘Jogging’ tonight being especially visceral, somehow a howl of rage and a clarion call for being alive simultaneously. In a way Dawson is Richard Thompson for socially awkward literature students; in another, he’s Chris Wood for Wire readers; but perhaps he’s simply unique.