Richard Proctor has been building the Daddy DRWG project around a very specific kind of discomfort. The 2024 debut album “A Tree Called Happy” established the bleak emotional territory, and the previous single “Wise Guys” took aim at toxic masculinity and the manosphere with what critics called charm, bite, and swagger. “Black Thread” turns the lens inward. Proctor describes it as a song designed to hold multiple readings simultaneously – depression, the wreckage of a failed relationship, illness creeping in – and he’s deliberately not resolving the ambiguity. The song is out June 26th, mastered by Charlie Francis, whose credits include R.E.M. and the Manic Street Preachers.
Communicating a sense of dread musically is no small feat, but that absolutely depressive atmosphere is curated beautifully here. The drums hold a steady beat with a relatively dry sound, some spacey keyboard lines add ear candy, and the guitar harmony with the bassline is the foundation, but those elements become more than the sum of their parts and create a beautiful sense of space for reflection, and the cherry on top is the vocal melodies, which are so sublime; one can’t help but sing along.
Richard Proctor trained in Music Technology at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and has been one half of The MeMeMes alongside the late Cardiff musician Mel Daley – that background in craft shows in how precisely the atmosphere is controlled here. For a solo project working largely independently out of Cardiff, the production is remarkably assured. Looking forward to seeing how it’s received when it drops at the end of June.
