The album's opening sextet, composed entirely on bass guitar, represents Dawkins at his most focused and inventive. These tracks demonstrate what happens when you strip away rock's default power dynamics and let the low end lead. "Everyday," a disco confection sung from a family dog's perspective, is winningly daft—the sort of novelty that earns its place through sheer commitment and a properly infectious groove. "Don't Wanna Go" shifts into reggae territory, this time addressing the family cat, with Dawkins handling all instrumentation including genuinely impressive saxophone work. For someone who "never thought he'd become a cat person," he's certainly made peace with feline muses.
"What Am I Thinking" ventures into synth-rock, exploring internal distress through lyrics while Dawkins employs bass in genuinely novel ways—filling spaces rather than simply holding down the bottom. It's a textural approach that guitarists and keyboardists have long exploited, but rarely attempted on the four-string. "To Give It All Away" pivots to indie-rock with a proper guitar solo, its community-minded lyrics providing welcome thematic weight. "Blue Corn" offers what Dawkins aptly describes as "Festival Rock"—a building, immersive experience that demands to be played loud. One can easily imagine this working magnificently in a field at sunset with proper amplification.
The first section concludes with "Solution Balneaire," a French-language track aimed at Francophone markets and internationally curious listeners. Its retro-styled rap tackles mental health with surprising directness—a bold move that mostly succeeds through sincerity rather than linguistic virtuosity. Whether Dawkins' French pronunciation passes muster with Québécois or Parisian ears remains to be seen, but full marks for ambition.
The remaining twenty-six tracks present a rather different proposition. Comprising songs written for bands that never materialised, incomplete projects, and Rock En Español collaborations inspired by traditional Mexican music, this portion of the album feels deliberately archival. Dawkins suggests the album is "intended to be a long listen that never becomes repetitive or tiresome," though that's a tall order for any collection approaching the hour-and-a-half mark. The Spanish-language material, created with a colleague passionate about Mexican musical traditions, demonstrates genuine cross-cultural curiosity, though the results vary considerably in their success.
What distinguishes Dawkins from mere dilettantes is his instrumental fluency. A multi-instrumentalist who began with flute and saxophone in the 1980s before adding guitar, keys, and bass in the 1990s, he's recently incorporated "mouth trumpet" into his arsenal—employed to provide non-vocal solos during bass-heavy performances. It's exactly the sort of wonderfully eccentric detail that endears him to listeners willing to embrace his magpie aesthetic.
*Incomplete Puzzle* is precisely what it claims to be: fragmented, exploratory, and unapologetically unfinished in spirit. The bass-centric opening tracks suggest an artist with genuine ideas about reimagining rock instrumentation. The sprawling remainder offers glimpses of roads not taken, collaborations that might have been, and experiments that never quite crystallised. It's too long by half, but there's something admirable about an artist willing to present work in all its messy humanity rather than curating everything into neat, commercial packages.
For those with the patience to sift through it, *Incomplete Puzzle* rewards attention. Just don't expect to absorb it all in one sitting.
**Incomplete Puzzle is available now via internet release.**