Your Review
CRITIC REVIEWS
95
Its significance, its profundity, its sheer exhilarating force will stay with you for far longer than just about anything else you’re likely to hear this year.
90
‘Peasant’ is a potent and mournfully beautiful meditation on humankind’s inability to fix itself.
90
Peasant is Dawson’s most direct, nuanced, and haunting creation yet, a frayed tapestry of a community in peril, where each is left to their own struggles, their own prejudices, their own inflictions of cruelty from a universe that seems designed to rot us from within.
90
Peasant is a pretty staggering departure from the massed ranks of 2017’s batch of albums. It is a restorative, headstrong burst of inspiration from an artist with the courage to execute his vision without compromise. If ever an album deserved to rise above the fray, it is this one.
88
‘Peasant’ has a lot to take in. Complex, ambitious and unwieldy it’s an album that would be admirable even if it didn’t quite work out. The fact that Dawson has created a record that lives up to and perhaps even exceeds the weight of its own aspiration is deeply impressive.
80
Abstruse but weirdly accessible, recherche but pertinent, Peasant is quite an achievement.
80
His only limitation is the world he lives in. Here, he begins to transcend it.
80
Bold and dense, tragic and hilarious, this is a record that binds together history, fantasy and personal revelation into a brilliant, uncompromising epic that shines like a beacon of hope in dark times.
80
Richard Dawson's sprawling and rustic tunes bring back a sense of olde English folklore and mysticism that isn't often heard in contemporary music.
70
If Richard Dawson is Fairport Unconventional, Peasant is his Liege & Lief, a strange but fascinating journey through the frameworks of British folk music as seen by one truly unique set of eyes.
Dec 12, 2017
late to the game... a few songs I REALLY like on this album (Ogre, Weaver, Shapeshifter & Scientist) and some I'm not so sure about. In general I like the feel, the concept & Dawson's guitar playing and voice/melodies.
Still need to get a better feel for some of the tracks.
Still need to get a better feel for some of the tracks.
Dec 7, 2017*
Making a concept album about life in medieval north Britain is a decidedly stupid idea. Pulling it off is rather genius.
END OF YEAR LISTS
| #1 | / | The Quietus |
| #2 | / | The Wire |
| #3 | / | Loud and Quiet |
| #3 | / | Spectrum Culture |
| #5 | / | Fopp |
| #6 | / | Uncut |
| #9 | / | Crack Magazine |
| #10 | / | Gigwise |
| #10 | / | Norman Records |
| #10 | / | The Guardian |
| #19 | / | The Needle Drop |
| #20 | / | MOJO |
| #22 | / | musicOMH |
| #36 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
| #36 | / | Tiny Mix Tapes |
MISC LISTS
| #8 | / | Exclaim! (Folk & Country) |
| #32 | / | Drift Records |
Track List
- Herald
- Ogre
- Soldier
- Weaver
- Prostitute
- Shapeshifter
- Scientist
- Hob
- Beggar
- No-One
- Masseuse
Added on: May 24, 2017
