RICHARD DAWSON + GOOD SAD HAPPY BAD – Live Band Gigs & Concerts

Upset The Rhythm presents…

RICHARD DAWSON
GOOD SAD, HAPPY BAD
Wednesday 30 April
The Clapham Grand, 21-25 St John’s Hill, Clapham, London, SW11 1TT
7pm | £30 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/ed6edd247a05

RICHARD DAWSON has drawn so many long drafts from the whirlpools of Elemental North Eastern Archetypes that he may be one himself. Fearless in his research and willing to follow his inspiration, Dawson has created an impressive music and storytelling catalogue steeped in ancient myths and contemporary dread. A fog of sickness, trauma, and mute inevitability inhabits his records. It is often expressed in the havoc with which Dawson’s hands produce sounds from his long-suffering guitar, an instrument as bruised, individual, and indefatigable as its owner.

Dawson’s forthcoming new album ‘End of the Middle’ (out Feb 14th through Weird World) is intricate, evocative, stripped-back, tactile and almost has the transportive ability to put you in the places and scenarios it describes. The album focuses on a family unit. “It zooms in quite close-up to try and explore a typical middle-class English family home,” Dawson says. “We’re listening to the stories of people from three or four generations of perhaps the same family. But really, it’s about how we break certain cycles. The family is a useful metaphor for examining how things are passed on generationally.”

The title of the new album, End of the Middle, is a suitably slippery contradiction that invites multiple interpretations: Middle-aging? Middle-class? The middle point of Dawson’s career? The centre of a record? Centrism in general? Polarisation? The possibility of having a balanced discussion about anything? Stuck in the middle with you? Middle England? Decide for yourself at this concert in the intimate, beautiful setting of The Clapham Grand.

GOOD SAD HAPPY BAD is a band composed of CJ Calderwood, Marc Pell, Mica Levi, and Raisa Khan. Their whimsical kraut punk and art rock experiments, brimming with mantras, cycles, and nervous lullabies, bring the listener into wobbly landscapes and toward spiralling epiphanies.

Their second album, All Kinds of Days (2024), a follow-up to their 2020 debut, Shades, deepens the band’s collaborative approach. It builds on instrumental improvisations that each member reworks with vocal contributions, creating a dynamic, shared storytelling experience. Throughout the album, the four musicians frequently unite in lush, layered choruses and meandering guitars that add a communal resonance.

All Kinds of Days delves into themes of loss, grief, recovery, healing, keeping a house together, and the challenges of parenthood, all set against a moody, intricate soundscape. Listeners are pulled through eerie guitar lines, spoken word, ghostly woodwinds, and gritty electronic textures, all disguised within an unconventional “band” sound framework. Beneath these atmospheric layers lies a rhythmic foundation of drums and nuanced melodies that lend drive and an unsettling beauty to the album’s sound.

https://good-sad-happy-bad.bandcamp.com/

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