The essence of primitive visual artists is the raw, uninhibited emotional response to the subject matter. They are often self taught and bring a freshness and spontaneity to the finished work which more than makes up for any lack of technical proficiency.
Richard Dawson may be working in a different medium but he's obviously a kindred spirit of these 'Sunday painters'.
His crude 'palate' comprises an erratically tuned acoustic guitar and a wavering voice that hits the right notes more by accident than design.
His ragtime influenced fingerpicking is well described by his publicists as ranging "from stumble to sublime". You hear this unusual technique best on the four instrumental tracks Juniper Berries Float Down The Stream, The Banburgh Beast, Cumberland Rag and Newcastle; the latter is named after his home town.
The Magic Bridge is Dawson's third self released album on his own Pink Triangle label. The warts and all production values and his singular delivery mean you might call him North-East England's answer to Jandek. The comparison is appropriate insofar that his performing style is destined to divide audiences between fervent admirers and bemused onlookers.
The subject matter of his songs is anything but conventional and makes no concessions to mainstream taste. One song is a detailed description of a wooden bag ("a level of workmanship one rarely comes across these days"); another has the self explanatory title Grandad's Deathbed Hallucinations and contains eccentric details such as the play of shadows on the skirting board and the smell of Yorkshire pudding.
The album's most haunting song is Man Has Been Struck Down By Hands Unseen where observations like the "the slow coagulation of the sky drowning out the light" are those of a man adrift in a strange and apparently hostile universe. It is a kind of warped companion piece to the Black Dog In The Sky which "pisses and slobbers all over the world" (see video).
The final line of this bold and original album , "I don't know where we go from here", seems apt in the circumstances but having come this far it would be a great pity if there's isn't more where this came from.
