The pull of Richard Hawley’s music is something that can last a lifetime. Across a two-decade long solo career – which was prefaced by stints performing in Britpop band the Longpigs and with Pulp – he has crafted full-bodied baroque-pop that operates in dualling ultimatums: hope or despair, freedom or solitude. Often, the emotional payoff of his songs unfolds through lyrical turns which invert sadness and romantic longing to reveal warmth, set against brooding guitars captured at close range.
Its singular magic, however, can be found in how Hawley has long looked at his hometown of Sheffield for inspiration, and seen glimpses of the ineffable. His ninth LP, ‘In This City They Call You Love’, elegantly represents what it means to be so entwined with one’s locale; even in a place rich with musical history, Hawley remains a singular figure for the way in which this fascination has permeated his songwriting. His albums bear a sequence of hometown titular references: ‘Lady’s Bridge’ stands above the River Don; ‘Truelove’s Gutter’ was named after an old town centre street; ‘Standing At The Sky’s Edge’, which has evolved into the current West End musical of the same name, was in part inspired by the storied Park Hill estate.
It’s one thing to make art directly influenced by places and memories that are, quite literally, so close to home; it’s another to keep going back for more. Hawley’s approach is to avoid too many specifics – it’s a record about the way a steely resolve has carried this narrator through time. A two-time Mercury Prize nominee, Hawley is still attuned to his work’s poignancy: love is patient but life is short, he tells us on the bossa nova-flecked ‘Do I Really Need To Know?’, while ‘Heavy Rain’ – which recalls the sonorous feel of 2005’s ‘Coles Corner’ – conjures a dreamlike state, the lush orchestration working as a perfect foil to his voice.
This warmth pervades, yet it is undercut with scatterings of mischievous flourishes. Hawley isn’t without a sense of humour about himself, it seems. The album is less startling than its predecessor, 2019’s rockabilly-influenced ‘Further’, in part because it gives equal weight to fiery blues (‘Prism In Jeans’, the Stooges-like stomp of ‘Two For His Heels’) and psychedelic folk (‘Deep Space’). ‘Have Love’ is robustly arranged, folding in a steadily strutting groove with a deeper, more gravelly vocal take.
Even the more straightforward tracks lean into a careering depth: ‘Deep Waters’, a song ostensibly about seeking solace, sounds troubled through its little bursts of dubby echo. Yet no matter how unexpected some of these moments may be, everything here feels curious and purposeful, like the sound of an imagination running free.
All of this hints at an experimental opus that Hawley may still be holding back, a future record that could showcase the full breadth of his maverick spirit. ‘In This City They Call You Love’ doesn’t falter for its lack of invention; there is just a feeling that these sonic quirks can be pushed even further, made even bolder. But as the soulful, breathtaking inner-city vignette ‘People’ shows, he clearly remains focused on the next great song he hasn’t written yet.
Details
- Release date: May 31
- Record label: BMG Records