Henki

Henki is an extremely entertaining tightrope walk between restraint and free rein, its well-earned moments of excess and exuberance genuinely joyful. It’s a ridiculous and brilliant record and makes an extravagant last-minute bid to sit among the best albums of the year.

Just as Dawson clearly relishes being able to record with Circle, so too does the album feel like a treat imparted to the listener in the lead up to Christmas. There’s so much to unpack here. It’s a sprawling work, the shortest song being six minutes, the longest being over twelve. Lyrically, Dawson is on fine form.

Dawson is able to soar gloriously over Circle’s layers of sound, while the group are stronger with his mighty voice and melodies elevating their tumult. The rest of us are just lucky to be able to dive into these seven songs, as heavy as Redwood trunks and as complex as cladoxylopsids. Cue thunderclap.

Throughout, there is so much going on that it takes many listens to absorb everything. But persevere and a tour de force of botanical rock takes form.

These are wild, protean hard rock songs rooted in psychedelic folk and delivered with Green Man-worthy gusto. What's not to love?

Henki might be Richard Dawson’s strangest album to date. But his ideas are fertilized by these songs’ peculiar twists and turns; the more Dawson and Circle lean into their eccentricities, the more their music resonates.

A general choogle drives most of the songs, the production tends to suppress any heavy metal impulses, while the dense arrangements also neuter Dawson’s gnarled improvisational guitar style, so extremes are essentially cancelled. It’s the most normal sounding record I’ve heard from either party, but the singer can’t help but entertain even within these surprisingly prim surroundings. [Dec 2021, p.48]