Revisiting Richard Dawson’s 2020

By Jack Rafferty

Richard Dawson’s 2020, released in 2019, was one of my favorite albums of that year. This was my introduction to Dawson, and from the first notes of the first track I was enthralled. His specific and wholly unique take on progressive folk, with its juxtaposition of discordance with some of the most profoundly sad melodies I’ve heard, and sharp lyrical critique of capitalism from a modern standpoint that does not feel forced in any way, keeps me returning to it often. 

His vocal style is very much his own and is simultaneously beautiful and crushing. The only somewhat comparative artist I can think of is Junior Brother, though more melodic. They both have this quality of sounding like a wounded creature at times, which lends itself aptly to the topics they are addressing. Coupled with a style of guitar playing that is very harsh at times (sometimes he plucks the strings so hard I anticipate them to break), and other times tragic and gentle, this album stands out, and I have not heard anything else quite like it. 

While there is quite a diversity of topics covered on this album, the throughline is the tragedy of loneliness, alienation, and exploitation that persists to this day, and the varied ways that it manifests in our lives in this age. His album, Peasant (2017), which was released right before 2020 approaches similar themes, though with a focus on medieval peasantry. These albums pair well together, as they both focus on oppressed classes of peoples in specific epochs struggling against prevailing modes of production and class relations. 

The first track, “Civil Servant,” is a good example of the divergence of sound that 2020 is making from its predecessor. The opening notes are brash, jarring, and repetitious, almost machine-like, which is fitting given the thematic focus of this album being set in modern times. This theme of mechanical noise grappling with the soaring, sad melodies fits very well with Dawson’s larger narrative of human struggle as appendages to the machine of capital. The first lyrics give a taste of what is to come, in terms of depicting the drudgery the working class must endure in this society,

Open your eyes, time to wake up

Shit, shower, brush your teeth, drain your cup

Wolf down a bowl of Ready-Brek

Fasten a tie around your neck

All over the city we arise, arise

For a job we despise, despise, despise.

Toward the end of the song, in what are some of the most crushing lines on the album, Dawson illustrates the persisting mental toll of social work under a capitalist society, saying that “in my bed, I can hear the strangled voices of all the people I’ve failed, I’ve failed, I’ve failed.” I think it is interesting that Dawson’s pronunciation of “I’ve failed” also sounds somewhat like “I’ve held,” which just enhances its sorrowful quality. I could honestly write a whole review about this song alone, but I will move on for the reader’s sake.

The next song, “The Queen’s Head,” is largely a commentary on rampant anti-immigrant sentiments, which the ruling class cultivates and uses to create antagonism within the working class. Dawson doesn’t mince words in his presentation of these topics, which this stanza highlights well, discussing the interpretation of a flood event,

There’s a crowd gathered ‘round the fat-headed butcher

Who’s back on his soap box again

Bemoaning the lack of adequate flood defences

Somehow putting it down to “an insurge

Of benefit-scrounging immigrants.” 

The powerful short refrain “how little we are (clung to the rivers edge/in the mouth of the world)” in the context of worsening climate disasters is in a sense an acknowledgement that humans do not stand above nature, dominating over it, but rather exist within it, and are bound to its laws. It reminds me of Frederick Engels’s notion of the futility of the conquest of nature, “Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.” Dawson laments with his aforementioned line about the hubristic fallacy that capitalist society believes itself to be in control of nature and impervious to the ramifications of prioritizing accumulation above all else. 

The fourth track, “Jogging,” talks more about mental health and disenfranchisement of workers, exploring how empty consumerism and escapism are sometimes the only ways that people cope with the material conditions they live in,

Recently I’ve been struggling with anxiety

To the point I find it hard to leave the flat

The days drain away, scouring eBay

Or looking on Zoopla at houses where I’ll never live.

The song then goes on to discuss how being recommended physical activity leads to him jogging “hundreds of miles going nowhere,” with a robotic voice in the background repeating the word “jogging” over and over, a tactic that is utilized later in the album as well. I love this, as it works to convey the ways in which everything in our lives, even our physical activity outside of work, is something prescribed to us to “fix” an ill that is systemic, and becomes not a source of genuine pleasure, but a task to complete like all else under this system. It is merely a method of maintaining the potential labor power in bodies to then be used up as much as possible for the sake of accumulation of capital. 

This is followed by further commentary on discrimination toward immigrant populations and the ways in which the system enables and perpetuates this,

There’s a Kurdish family on the ground floor

Had a brick put through their kitchen window

The police know who did this, still they do nothing

It’s lonely up here in Middle-England.

There is a line not long after this that says, “I feel the atmosphere/‘Round here is growing nastier/People don’t smile anymore.” I think this ties in well with the narrative of mental health under capitalism being rooted not only in our exploitation, but in our separation from one another, in our loneliness and our division. 

I will skip a few tracks to focus on one of my favorites on the album, “Fulfillment Centre.” This is a perfect distillation of the conditions of the modern-day worker in an Amazon so-called “fulfillment” center. Bringing back repetition as a theme, the song merely begins with Dawson reiterating “over and over and over and over, again and again and again and again and again,” which wonderfully illustrates the focus of this song being the type of division of labor that exists as a worker in an Amazon warehouse doing the same tedious, redundant tasks all day. 

This is followed by the same robotic voice showcased earlier, stating “five hundred units per hour, hour after hour after hour, please adjust your packing rate accordingly,” which perfectly encapsulates the feeling of some dystopian AI supervisor, omnipresent over the workers, constantly analyzing and appraising their productivity. The robotic voice continues soon after in the same repetitious cadence, “increase productivity, increase productivity, increase productivity!” which feels as though it would be at home depicting some oppressive institution on Pink Floyd’s The Wall, as though it could be transitioning from a supervisor shouting over young children toiling in a factory of Victorian London to a lifeless red eye, staring out over the floor of an Amazon warehouse. We then get the worker’s perspective, discussing the cheap commodities they are forced to package to scrounge what subsistence they can, and the conditions they face doing so,

Bedding and power tools, tablets and football shirts

Perfume and Blu-Ray discs, jewelry and dehumidifiers.

I am desperate for the toilet

But if I go, I’ll miss my targets

All I can do is pee in a bottle

They treat us like animals here.

This is followed by a guitar solo that feels both mechanical and demented, as though it were embodying the deranged scene these workers are forced to endure, and the deep stress and discomfort of their bodies and minds. Dawson gives an example of how these workers are brought to their limit, where they have breakdowns, and the ways in which the inhumanity of this system simply ignores such distress, and only steps in to neutralize it when it becomes an inhibitor to the process of production.

A gentleman who spoke little English

Started to scream at the top of his lungs

No one could understand what he was getting at

Everyone stared ahead and kept working until

Someone came from on high to escort him from the building.

The song ends with this cry of exhaustion and plea for something better,

There’s nothing left of me by the time I shuffle homeward

On the early morning train

To eat a little breakfast and sleep a while

Before it starts again

There’s more, there has to be

More to life than killing yourself to survive.

Finally, I will discuss the closing track, which takes a first person look at the plight of the unhoused. The title illustrates the way life is so coldly disregarded under this system, with the image of a dead dog in an alleyway atop a pile of burst trash bags, with the poignant line “dead dog in an alleyway, dreaming of home.” Dawson then goes on to detail the abuse that those who have to live on the streets endure, crying out for help to a culture and a world that seemingly doesn’t give a shit about them, and has forsaken them, since they are deemed worthless for not sacrificing every waking moment producing surplus value. 

In the moment just before I awake to a savage kicking

Blows rain down upon me through the blackness of my sleeping bag

Help me, help me, please help me

Won’t you please help me?

Anyone?

This is followed by the contrast of the pleasant lives privileged people live within immediate proximity of those suffering in the streets. 

You can hear the families chatter with each swing of the door

Music, tinkling cutlery, and the laughter of the little ones.

I especially love the chorus to this song, accurately signifying so much that is wrong with this late-stage capitalist society in just four lines, from infrastructure to addiction and the ever-present brutality of the police state,

Over there in the labyrinth of neon

You can hear the voices lift through the icy air

Hooting and projectile vomiting

And the distant sound of sirens.

Overall, 2020 remains one of my favorite albums of recent years. While his more recent releases have been brilliant in their own way, none of them have really captured me like this one has. The sound here is both grand and stripped back, mechanical yet tender and human, unsettling and powerful. I still have much more to say about it as a whole, but I will resist the temptation to make this piece any longer than it already is. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend doing so.