Dave Burn - Medium Dave + Friends (2025) Hi-Res

Londoner Dave Burn is best known as co-founder of americana “supergroup” Orphan Colours and Ahab, but when solo, his creativity really shines. As the title of his second solo album indicates, he is not completely alone; he has brought a few musician friends along. The rest of the title contains not just his nickname but an altogether more serious notion. Some time ago, Burn found himself working with two other Daves, one bigger and one smaller, but the sense of being in the middle occurred to him in another context. Seeing how just about anything these days is so polarised at two extremes, Burn thought, what about just being somewhere in the middle ground? He posits that wisdom gained with age often takes the edge off previously held views that might have come across as radical. What’s wrong with just taking that middle course? It is not a cop out, but just saying no to the extremes. This whole idea, if a bit blurry, lay behind his 2022 EP ‘Medium Dave’. He kept on writing, and the same theme kept popping up until he had enough songs for a full album. The cover art is the same, too; many of a similar age and outlook can relate to that fine right foot.

Burn wastes no time in setting out where he is coming from. ‘Down From The Mountain’ opens with a determined electric guitar riff that immediately grabs the attention. Burn’s relaxed, warm vocals are the velvet glove to the iron fist of a lyric, “I met you last night in my dreams/ You were my brother/ Ever so strong but not so wise/ How you loved to frighten the others/ Silence the fire in your mind”. In other words, I don’t want to fight you, can’t you just lay off? How many times have we thought similarly? It is easy to equate wanting to avoid confrontation with passivity, but that is not how Burn comes across. Instead, as he points out in the reflective ‘Universe’, far from the world revolving around us, we are really rather small parts of something far larger. Turning to his own thoughts, ‘Stop Panicking’, with its brisk tempo, belies his calming message to, “Stop panicking, there’s always another life”.

There is a love song, not quite boy meets girl, but again viewed through the lens of one who has been around a while. In a very English folk style, ‘Always New’ reveals love is not of a person but the bottle. ‘Violent Animals’ returns to the theme of extremes. Again, Burn opens quietly with acoustic guitar giving way to a more determined electric sound as he dares to, “Take the piss, I couldn’t resist/ Now he’s screaming at me like a child” before issuing the chilling warning, “We’re violent animals”.

The upbeat ‘Friend of Mine’ is how Burns sees himself, “Good friends are hard to find/ but it ain’t that hard to be a friend of mine”. With his honest, perceptive writing and undoubted musical ability, Burns would indeed be a good friend to anyone who can’t stand extremes and just wants to get along somewhere down the middle.