Altmusic Presents: Richard Dawson

Altmusic is proud to announce Richard Dawson (UK) touring New Zealand throughout October 2015!

English singer and guitarist Richard Dawson is a skewed troubadour at once charming and abrasive. His shambolically virtuosic guitar playing stumbles from music-hall tune-smithery to spidery swatches of noise- colour, swathed in amp static and teetering on the edge of feedback. His songs are both chucklesome and tragic, rooted in a febrile imagination that references worlds held dear and worlds unknown.

Richard Dawson spent years incubating his singular art, becoming a quiet legend on the Newcastle experimental scene before exploding across the UK and Europe with the delicately observed personal lilt of his breakthrough 2012 album The Magic Bridge. Invitations followed to perform at Kraak, Supersonic, and Latitude festivals as well as being lauded by The Wire magazine, Late Junction, The Quietus, The Guardian, Pitchfork and more. Subsequent albums The Glass Bridge (2013) and his latest Nothing Important (2014) have fulfilled and extended the promise of his earlier work, meeting unanimous critical acclaim.

“Extraordinary... a strange, discordant reconfiguration of English folk traditions.” - The Guardian

“Accompanying himself on a battered acoustic guitar, with his fingerpicking amplified to a rusty and jagged carillon, his vocals swing from a splintering tree trunk roar – often delivered without a microphone – to a finely worked falsetto. Between songs, hes an amiably shambling presence, adept at the traditional Geordie sport of pisstaking while wearing vulnerability like a clowns make-up” - The Wire

“Richard Dawson is a singer with a voice thats both gentle barfy croak and Icarus-soaring croon, vocal cords that have been roughly mulled by a ragged red wine as opposed to a thing made arid by whiskey. As a guitar player hes evolved from homespun folk tales to a man whose playing has recently altered into a (possibly) car battery powered finger- picked electric and messy blues.” - The Quietus

Tour info listed below – ticket presales available via Undertheradar, $20 presales / $25 on the door (prices include booking fee):

Auckland - Thursday 8 October, Whammy Bar, w/ Sheville, Thistle Group Wellington - Friday 9 October, Meow, w/ Valerie
Dunedin - Wednesday 14 October, Chicks Hotel, w/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Christchurch - Friday 16 October, The Wunderbar, w/ Pumice, Motte