Why doesn't hurt Siobhan Fahey if you throw fruit at her?
Banana Armour
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; but perhaps he’s simply unique.