Richard Dawson / Vibracathedral Orchestra / Phil Tyler - Live at The Star & Shadow, Newcastle

Having launched his incredible album, Nothing Important, at the Star & Shadow in the winter of last year, Richard Dawson returns tonight to play the first gig of his UK Tour once again on this homely stage.

The two supporting acts shine through the evening’s sky like the sun and moon crossing Dawson’s soul. First on, Phil Tyler stands steady and loyal as he retells melodies from both sides of the Atlantic using his banjo for divination. As the opening instrumental ‘No Wealth But Life’ draws focus from the spirited audience, many new eyes and ears fill into the room until it is packed full. Tyler’s performances are always modest, with his presence on stage almost bashful. This allows the instrumentals and songs to be witnessed and understood apart from the person playing them. By seeing such devotion, it is important to recognise Tyler as not just an excellent and skilled musician, but as someone committed to his passions for their own virtue.

As a styrofoam head presented at the front of the stage is adorned with headphones, and an A4 photocopy picture of Lou Reed is casually taped to the back curtain, the signs are set that Vibracathedral Orchestra’s performance will be abrasive, but boy, few were prepared! From a stage littered with instruments, The Leeds quartet took few moments to arrive at a torrent of sound which they then joyously improvised around and within for close to an hour. Phil Tyler’s considered approach is now balanced by this uncertainty and wilderness. Childhood curiosity was ever present in their eyes as each band-mate explored different instruments; from guitars, to synths, to percussion, to recorders. A fake severed hand lay on the floor throughout but was not utilised. Though their faces were lined with a million stories, these men were growing younger as they played. Though some members of the audience were defeated by the power of the sound, this unapologetic tirade was a strangely fitting purifier for the ears about to listen to tonight's headliner.   

With ale gleaming in his cheeks, Richard Dawson takes merriment in being a few minutes early onto the stage and enjoys joking with many characters in the crowd. Though clearly excited by this christening date in his calendar, friendly support in the audience is palpable and Dawson rides the waves with grace. As the opening motif to Man Has Been Struck Down By Hands Unseen is recognised, excitement curls in the faces watching and whatever has lead up to this moment has passed - the night now belongs to this music. 

Perhaps because of the heat in the room, or exhaustion, our singer’s voice is more strained than usual, with some of the falsetto notes falling into breath. This huskier and angular quality in his vocals however helped make tonight’s version of The Vile Stuff as violent a march as it has ever been. The fire in this performance was lapped up as one of the evening’s highlights, with the crowd singing favourite lines loudly, and laughing with its humour.

The setlist was a rich tribute to his album The Magic Bridge, filled predominantly with songs from that record with a few inclusions from the two following albums. 

When Dawson removed his jumper for the final portion of his set to reveal a Thelonious Monk T-shirt, there was something wonderfully childlike about how blushing he was of this item of clothing. Though depicting one of his heroes, he indicated it was an arbitrary clothing decision. Maybe so… 

A plethora of surprises made the denouement anything but formal. From an improvised verse of song playfully mocking his idiosyncrasies, to performing lines of dialogue from the Pacino/De Niro movie Heat, to putting the guitar into standard tuning! and then fumbling his way through Roy Orbison’s In Dreams. To finish he resurrected I Will Make It Up To You from his 2007 album, Sings Songs and Plays Guitar and the song’s bold romance capped the night perfectly.

As goodbyes are said, Dawson gives thanks to The Star and Shadow. Though the rooms now full of life and history are sadly soon to be relinquished, the community that built such a vibrant place, as our troubadour correctly identifies, will start a new lease of life in their next settlement. Long may they live! 

[2015.02.07] for NE:MM Online Magazine.

Group Of The Atlos - R U Person Or Not - Album Review

Group Of The Atlos is the name of a society of musicians that has grown around its five original members that formed in 2006. As a whole, they display traits common to post-rock practices, operating as a flexible set of players servicing the songs they compose with individual egos not rising above the resonating character of the work. Various vocalists and instrumentalists may be given a moment of focus in a track, but such displays do not provide the listener with evidence of what a future composition might be constructed from.

    Following a project scoring a film in 2013, the Wisconsin collective returned to recording this eight-track LP, R U Person Or Not. Throughout this new album, much of the music is weighty and sombre. Learning To Share opens with a slow waltz of guitar octaves. From this introduction, the texture crescendos as many guitar and brass counterparts are added. This building passage instantly supports their instrumental-rock influences. We hear similar building sections later, too - (the endings of News From Wino and On Wreck for example.)

    to: Saviour follows up, incorporating a soulful and wailing lead rock-vocal, roaming around the pentatonic scale, as the other instrumentation effectively peddles the route note. Such a style of singing is unusual within an album of more progressive arrangements like this one, for often such ornamentation and flamboyance in technique is considered immodest and individualistic amongst the post-rock purists. That kind of attitude is a lazy stereotype, and it is to Group Of The Atlos’ credit to include this vocal sound: a welcome additional timbre, giving a rich colour to this record’s rainbow.

   

    Fucks With Us presents one of the album’s most surprising sonic inclusions: a Jamaican-accent-inflected sung rap, leading a slow minor-skank. Out of delirious repetitions of ‘forgive me, forgive me,’ a manic stream of lyrical confession breaks out, resilient through to the song’s conclusion.

    Coplight uses it penultimate position to patiently wind together the roads of the record, carefully unfolding a melancholic duet. A true moment of intimacy is carved out (away from the earlier storms) by blending a solo male and a solo female’s vocal over soft instrumentation.

    The album concludes in a wonderfully farcical fashion with the spooky flash-groove of Forgiveness Rules. The paralleling vocals with guitar wails, and the celebratory energy perfectly off-setting the ernest resonances of the penultimate track.

    With the deliberately naive title of the record, and altered-skull artwork, we are given clues that, as listeners, we might experience an album focussed on some aspects of humanity (existentialism perhaps?,) and though each track is quite unique sonically, it is for this philosophical focus that the set forms as a coherent collection.

    R U Person Or Not certainly contains unique sounds, thoughtfully chosen and performed. The use of overlapping various voices throughout cleverly supports an idea of unity as an antidote against existential isolation considered in the lyrics: From the various vocalists occupying different frequencies within the crowd-chanting of Gun, and On Wreck, to the lyrical phrases completed from the gendered voices, hand-in-hand on Coplight. The variety of colour and influence throughout stimulates imagination in the listener’s mind. Such a display of so many styles, from track-to-track, makes it an enigmatic record as a whole, with certain portions resonating at different sittings.

   

[2015.02.01] for NE:MM Magazine.