ROCK

Richard Dawson & Circle Henki

Domino ★★★✩✩

NOW that Adele has made her comeback, the autumn succession of blockbuster albums seems to be at an end, which leaves welcome room for the stranger stuff to make itself heard. I thought a 14-year-old girl singing Nick Cave songs with The Flaming Lips was the weirdest album concept of this week, until I heard that Newcastle folk musician Richard Dawson had teamed up with veteran Finnish metal band Circle for a collection of songs about plants.

Dawson is a long-term fan of the eclectic Finns and first joined them onstage at a Helsinki festival in 2019. Silphium, on this release, is over 12 minutes long, named after an extinct plant used as a contraceptive in classical antiquity. It begins as a chugging Krautrock song before settling into a mix of winding guitars and creepy whispering before a vibrant, piano-led climax.

The big difference is the vocals. Mika Rättö has tended to sing in the fictional language of the kingdom of Meronia, whereas Dawson uses tiny details to make surprising poetry from the everyday. The dense fug of Lily sees him sing of ghosts seen while “working as a junior nurse”, and playing snooker with Steve Davis in the video — a twist that makes perfect sense in this bizarre new sound world.