Richard Dawson @ Saint Luke's, Glasgow, 26 Apr

There’s no two ways about it, it’s always going to be a bold choice to open a gig with a 40-minute song. Hours before this gig, Jim Legxacy put out what is in all likelihood one of the finest records of the year, and the whole thing is a quarter-of-an-hour shorter than Dawson’s opening number. It’s a shame then that live The Hermit suffers in much the same way that it does on record.

The problem is not the ten-minute instrumental opening – something some have seemed to take against since the album's release – as its delicate scene-setting combined with the band ambling on and joining Dawson one by one is rather lovely. Instead it’s that once Dawson begins to sing, despite the song’s dense unfurling narrative, it steadfastly fails to properly grip for much of its duration, simply ambling and ambling, walking a very circuitous path to nowhere.

This is something of a theme for the rest of The Ruby Cord songs in the set, and given they make up all but one of the six songs played tonight, it rather upends the gig. They’re brilliantly played – Angharad Davies’ violin in particular is superb, piercing like beautiful static, but times where they bloom to life are few and far between. There are moments where the recent songs really work, the rousing choruses of The Fool and the battering finale that Horse and Rider ultimately gets to, Rhodri Davies’ harp playing a whirl of clanking, jabbing notes as the song finally comes to life.

Image: Richard Dawson live at Saint Luke's, Glasgow, 26 Apr by Hope Holmes

But for too much of the gig it veers dangerously close to the rock gig as recital, one in which the whole thing feels too distant from the feelings that are meant to be channelled. The looseness and trust in faults that typifies Dawson’s superb solo shows is lost. There’s a case to be made that this is kind of the point. A step away from the visceral making sense given The Ruby Cord’s usage of VR as a narrative tool, but it still leaves too many of the songs feeling emotionally limp. 

However, this is all transformed for the closing song. Ogre is Dawson at his best. A stomping, full-blooded, whole band near tearing their instruments to pieces, monster of a song. Here, for the first time of the night Dawson seems to be truly channeling the song’s character rather than peering at it through academic lenses, the fear, paranoia, hope and despair of their story rattling across his body.

He returns to the very core of what makes him a brilliant performer, his combination of a voice that feels like it would be more at home were it coming from a geological phenomena, and intense commitment to the song. It’s what has made him one of the great singer-songwriters of his generation, it just only appears in flashes tonight.