Written by Spike Sidor

HENKI

Richard Dawson Circle Henki Review Album Cover

RICHARD DAWSON/CIRCLE

2021 PSYCH-ROCK/PROG-ROCK/FOLK-ROCK

Henki is the first collaborative album between Geordie folk artist Richard Dawson and Finnish rock ensemble Circle. Anyone with an ear to the ground of the modern music landscape should know who Richard Dawson is by now. There are a lot of positive attributes to be tacked on to his art so let’s leave it at that he is one of the best doing his thing today. As for style he is all over the left-field folk spectrum from minimal but abrasive, to dark ages inspiration, to grand instrumentation with his signature wild songwriting. Circle however I’m not as familiar with. I’ve given their stuff a try in the past but it’s never done much for me. What they make depends on the record, they are one of those rock bands that creates what they feel as they feel. For simplicity’s sake let’s pen them into the narrow field of krautrock, heavy metal, and ambient; some would throw out the tag experimental rock.

To be perfectly honest I listened to Henki a few times when it was released several months back and didn’t care for it. Not that I thought it was bad. Richard’s storytelling was still captivating but the ineffectual and fairly orthodox rock that it sat atop did nothing for me. Coming back to it that was too harsh, I was fresh off of yet another whirlwind romance with Richard’s solo material, ogling how beautifully he squeezes harmonies out of jagged compositions. When that wasn’t delivered I zoned out, I said I’ll come back to this another time, put some distance between my preconceptions. Turns out that was the right thing to do because it’s pretty good, certainly rosier but there are too many moments of lukewarm prog being dragged across the finish line by tour de force vocal performances.

That being said if you found albums like Peasant and 2020 to be a touch too weird, or are a Circle fan, or if you just like rock music then this could be incredible to you. It feels like the collaboration serves as a filter and as Richard was poured through the larger pieces of his peculiarities didn’t make it through, sadly I happen to love big chunks of Richard Dawson in my drink. To finally get to the sound of Henki the songs are of winding rock that are a little on the heavy side with psychedelic tendencies. Sonically it’s not very folk despite the label at the top, but Richard wraps his voice around the rise and fall of the instrumentation weaving tales in his usual folky way.

He wastes no time and begins spinning his yarn on Cooksonia; a contemplative giant whose booming tenor envelopes the room yet soothes the soul. Richard matches this with a tone of melancholy delivering a kind of informational poetry on botanist Isabel Cookson of all things. In fact plants are the main lyrical topic of the whole album. They take scholarly reports and fables of old to create horticultural mythos and this song is no different, it is a steady march to scientific glory. 

There are no birds
No bushes or trees
No beasts nor people
Only this single stem

A fantastical angle is explored on Ivy with an exploration of Greek lore, unsurprisingly the subject is the God of flora Dionysus. Perhaps better known for his parties but there can be no party without good food and drink. Even the deity’s involvement in giving King Midas his famous golden touch is included. I get the theme of destroying the natural world for personal gain but it’s overtold to the point of cliché, especially contrasted with the prior little known winemaking tale. The track has a methodical darkness, like a story told in an old pub, poorly lit on the backdrop of dark wooden interior driving to the beat of a banging pint. But this is a progressive track so eventually the whole town joins as the building begins to shake from their bellows. Silphium strikes a more adventurous tone with its production while reciting a history of woe. There is a long section of low-key ambiance with all their usual instruments just doing whatever in the free-jazz spirit. The issue is nothing seriously compelling is happening. The moments it allows for listener contemplation and to build atmosphere are good but it sits around twiddling its thumbs until it sheepishly circles back to its original concept only to waste time riffing away on its core loop until I’m tired of that as well. Was it supposed to fill me with a sense of wandering desolation or what, because all I felt was a desire for Richard to come back.

It’s not like the whole record performs poorly without him like on Silene whose whisper soft sentimentality flows over an untouched hillside. There is only a short bit of poetry before the wandering guitar and rippling synths take over but importantly they don’t overstay, they cultivate the mood and exit. On the whole Henki has a theatrical tone, especially when Richard hits operatic highs but none go further down that road than Methuselah. You can practically see the curtain rise and lights dance across the stage to accentuate the band clad in robes as they throw their shaking arms towards the rafters. This has my favorite story of the runtime with the unbelievably real occurrence of a scientist felling an old tree to learn it was quite possibly the oldest living thing on earth with a couple great ancient parallels. Its theatricality does brush with corny several times, the worst being when Richard belts out “bad dreams, full of lightning” followed by a thunderclap, it’s so silly and it feels like that wasn’t the intention. On its face Lily isn’t much about vegetation beyond its title as it spins its dramatic retelling of hospital ghost stories, but with death comes flowers. 

Black lights
Lolling in the distance
I have seen the flowers of another country
Black lights
Blooming in the doorway
Petals unfold around me

The chorus is the main attraction as the instrumentation swells and backing singers join in for more glimpses of ostentatious stage play action. The album ends in bombastic fashion with the carnivorous Pitcher. An epic of synth heavy progressive rock that would fit right in the early to mid-seventies. High on adventure, and I hate to be referential but it sounds so uncannily like a Yes song, but not a great one, an okay deep cut where their sticky rhythms just don’t hit like they normally do. They take the concept too far with soaring vocals in a language that I can’t identify that are supposed to come off triumphant like the climax of a European epic poem but land adjacent to goofy instead.

Henki always manages to create a battle in my mind, Richard and Circle clearly have excellent chemistry and none of the songs are straight up bad but its classic rock n’ roll pastiche is a step too tired. I wonder if I had heard these instrumentals on an unknown album from four decades ago if I would have thought anything of them. Still, it’s good but no matter the number of times I put it on I hear an excellent album trapped in its catacombs, sometimes it sounds close other times far away, but it never makes it out

6-7/10

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