RICHARD GORMAN – W C N S F (Bandcamp) (2025)

Please support if you can. The cause is a just and worthy one.

More words of wisdom in this troubled world of ours from Dundee’s principal troubadour: ‘Big Man with a Gun’ might well be much talked about if it had emanated from someone better known, a strong melody, biting chorus, and some strident guitar work. On ‘Little Jewel’ it all calms down with insights into the perils and flibbertigibbet of style and fashion, and influencers and paparazzies- “should be working on your profile and networking” instead of playing “those crazy tunes” or words to that effect; and the punchline “Everybody loves you ‘til they’re tearing you apart.” “You’d eat your hard luck if that’s all that you could get”, Richard Gorman is always on the side of the marginalised members of society as the arpeggiated tones of ‘Cheap Beer’ suggest. Exploitation, criminality, they all get a makeover while ‘So It Goes’ at first awakens the ghost of Nick Drake. There are few topics that aren’t forensically examined by Richard: this is seriously good music by a serious artist. Sometimes Richard conjures some unworldly, ghostly sounds from his guitar as he deals with “Toxic Masculinity” with lines about “fishing online for a bride” and “love brings out the devil in me” and “a strong man just takes what he needs”; it gets a little explicit in places but a nod of “I know what you mean” is inevitable, two sliding percussive chords hammering home the message.

Richard turns to Greek mythology on the cleverly worked deterministic song Sisyphus’ who, in case you have forgotten or didn’t know in the first place, is a hubristic god defying trickster who spent his time in eternity rolling a boulder up a hill (Don’t we all get that feeling sometimes?) On ‘Denial’ glissando is pulled out of the musical box of tricks, the closest I’ve heard Richard come to a blues, I think. Some bell like harmonics introduce ‘Game Over’ which has Uncle Ben firmly in his sights ranging between the deadly serious (Sandy Hook) and the farcical (Elvis is alive), and also dependency on applications. “A man following a smartphone wanders into the road.” Quite! The title track (wounded child, no surviving family’) is a harrowing tale, using the acronym for Gaza’s orphans of the effect of the drones of war on young children. Are you listening, the powers who stand by, watch and do nothing?

Oh, and it's all for a great charitable cause at a terrible time for the people living in the Gaza strip. Please support if you can.