Peasant (album)
| Untitled | |
|---|---|
Peasant is a studio album by avant-garde folk musician Richard Dawson, released on the 2nd of June 2017 by Weird World. Each song on the album is from the perspective of a different fictional narrator. Although it is set in the Kingdom of Bryneich, from the 400s to the 600s CE, it is intended to be a modern record, the stories and plight of each character largely contain universal themes that connect to the present day.[1] For example, the song "Beggar" is the simple tale of a homeless man and his beloved dog, and "Masseuse" is an exploration of the nature of greed.
Reception
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 82/100[2] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    [3] |
| The Guardian | [4] |
| The Quietus | (very favourable)[5] |
Peasant received some acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 82 based on eleven reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".[2] The Quietus listed it in first position on their list of the best albums of 2017,[6] and it placed second in The Wire magazine's annual critics' poll.[7] Exclaim! listed it at number 8 on their Top 10 Folk and Country Albums of 2017 list.[8]
In Danny Riley's review of the album for The Quietus, he described Peasant as "a work reclaiming meaning of words like "folk" and "community," a complex parable and a force for unification in divisive times" and described Dawson's avant-garde approach to folk music as "more a prickly thicket of brambles than a bed of moistened leaves, with creakily bowed strings, spiky rushes of acoustic guitar and occasional splurges of noise."[5]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Richard Dawson
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Herald" | 2:18 |
| 2. | "Ogre" | 6:56 |
| 3. | "Soldier" | 4:52 |
| 4. | "Weaver" | 5:58 |
| 5. | "Prostitute" | 4:00 |
| 6. | "Shapeshifter" | 4:30 |
| 7. | "Scientist" | 4:48 |
| 8. | "Hob" | 5:57 |
| 9. | "Beggar" | 7:24 |
| 10. | "No-one" | 1:20 |
| 11. | "Masseuse" | 10:49 |
References
- ^ "Richard Dawson - Interview - 2017". Retrieved 24 December 2017.
- ^ a b "Critic Reviews for Peasant - Metacritic". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
- ^ Deming, Mark. "Peasant - Richard Dawson". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
- ^ Petridis, Alexis (2 June 2017). "Richard Dawson: Peasant review – Muddy glorious". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
- ^ a b Riley, Danny (1 June 2017). "The Quietus | Reviews | Richard Dawson". The Quietus. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
- ^ "Quietus Albums of the Year 2017". The Quietus. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
- ^ "Rewind 2017: Releases of the Year 1–50". The Wire. No. 407. London. January 2018. p. 32 – via Exact Editions. (subscription required)
- ^ "Top 10 Folk and Country Albums of 2017". Exclaim!. Retrieved January 9, 2018.