New Music | Richard Dawson - Polytunnel

Cyrus Larcombe Moore

Cyrus is a poet and journalist with Essential Tremor from Devon. He’s now based in Belfast studying MA Poetry at Queens University Belfast.

Alongside the announcement of his new album ‘End Of The Middle’, Richard Dawson has dropped the gorgeous single ‘Polytunnel’

Richard Dawson’s new single ‘Polytunnel‘ is stripped-back, intimate, and caring. Following his last two projects—2022’s ‘The Ruby Cord‘ and a collaboration with Finnish band Circle—the comfort of Dawson’s lo-fi sound draws us into his “happy place”: an allotment.

The gentle intimacy of this song transports you right into the allotment, where lullaby-like fingerpicking reassures us that, as ever with Dawson, we are in safe hands, awaiting his new album, ‘End of the Middle‘, arriving on 14th February via Domino. In the face of the sixth extinction, political extremism, and global conflict, Dawson’s soothing observations feel more profoundly needed than ever.

I’d recommend this song to anyone, but seriously—go watch the video. The kindness of this track is realised in the faces of Dawson’s allotment neighbours. With a diverse cast of characters, each showing genuine pride in their produce, every kind eye and earnest smile speaks directly to the compassion of Dawson’s music.

Questions of grief, death and lost love sneak into the idyllic lyrics of this track. Perhaps that’s my cynicism and it really is as joyous a song as it first seems, yet the tension between narrative complexity and simple lyrical content is something Dawson encourages:

“I think I know what’s happening in the song, but hopefully that’ll be different for each person listening,” Dawson says. “I like that the line ‘Out the gate and down the lane’ – it could mean going down the allotment, or it could mean going somewhere else. ‘Tunnel’ is obviously a very loaded word. There might be a lot of drama happening outside the lines of the song… Or not. It might just be a song about an allotment.”

Interpret its lyrics as you like, but this marks a new musical direction for Dawson, one that leads him further into quiet sincerity. While his music has never lacked compassion, this song presents it more plainly than any of his recent work.

Watch/Listen to ‘Polytunnel’ here: