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Songs of Alienation Pared to the Bone 

Richard Hawley ‘In This City They Call You Love’

New Album Review 

Release Date 31^st May 2024 on BMG

It took a few plays to appreciate the new Richard Hawley album, ‘In This City They Call You Love’ which is released by  BMG on 31^st May 2024.  You'll need to be in a certain emotional state to get the most from this album.  Initially it comes across as cruise-ship-lounge music, possibly to be played before the second sitting for dinner is called.  In the round, this is a pleasant listening experience. By the close of the last track, you will have heard the singer-songwriter employ all his talents to good effect, as well as ghostly echoes of some of pop music's greatest male voices: Presley, Cash, Orbison.

Hawley sets off with a wheel-spin screech of guitar, for the opening track and single cut For His Heels before recounting tales in sombre tone and dispensing words of wisdom from the back parlour.  The first track promises more from its initial epi-pen shot of adrenalin, but our driver soon settles into a Skoda-sensible pace.

The tenor of the opening song’s accompaniment is so dark that Hawley’s deep voice seems mildly angelic in contrast.  He tunefully talks his way through much of the album, putting some oomph into his singing on a couple of numbers.  There’s plenty of echo on the vocal and a confident swing to several tunes.  He has a lovely voice, well-suited to all-seater venues, such as the Brighton Dome, or the grassy downs of a Dorset summer festival.  I am keen to know how his upcoming tour will be received where there are no chairs, or chaise lounges, or banks of grass to lie back on.

 

Although the promotion material appears to be homage to the City of Cutlery, it is not all silver-plated. We also get the benefit of being advised You’ve gotta have love, if you wanna get love on Have Love. Sage advice from lovable uncle Richard.  

The album's third track, Prism in Jeans suggests fitting into a place like Sheffield may not be as easy one could expect. It is a iron fist / velvet glove moment on belonging.

Perhaps to emphasise the importance of the damp climate to his home town, the lyric Heavy rain, heavy rain, all this heavy rain, heavy rain, all this heavy rain to a slow two-four tempo, in a song titled Heavy Rain tells you all that's needed to know about the fourth track of the album.  The background sound of sad strings, draws us down rivulets of rain on the window panes of the singer's heart.  

 

People starts with references to the River Don, knives, lives working at furnaces and in forges and contains the album naming chorus line, People in this city call you ‘love’  There is more of Sheffield’s associated imagery we might have been fed. Sheffield has a great art gallery, some stunning war memorials, (particularly to the women who worked in the steelworks during wartime), and the huge steel wall of running water outside the station.  Even the Crucible, Wednesday and United might have been referenced to ink in more detail from this vibrant city.  Yet, Hawley’s writing is sparse, as he cuts into the recurring theme of this collection, the contrast between the city's bustle with inner personal experience.

 

People is the track from where the album springs and it is clear that the writer has worked hard on shaping lyrics that convey the complexity and character of the place.  It is indeed the …city of knives where folks work so hard they stay most their lives… weaving the city-wide setting into a lonely lost-love story, turning on the irony of calling everyone Love.

 

Hawley meets Cash.
Pic: Dean Chalkley

By the time we get to Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow we are walking in the shadow of Johnny Cash.  The song simple, lyrics using repetition to good-effect, the music comfortable, downbeat.

The enormity of Deep Space and our planetary climate catastrophe is conveyed in an up-tempo fashion.  Hawley dwells on the need for some personal room in the over-whelming urban clutter.  He delivers one of the rare guitar solos he spared for this album.  He wanted the lyrics to have room to breathe.  Again, his lyrics revolve around a pun, here personal space and the Elon Musk-like dreams of hot-footing it into the far-corners of the Universe to escape our burning-out planet.

It stresses me out and it always will.  I need space.  We need space.  Deep Space. 
 

From there we find Hawley in Deep Waters, those Deep waters where I’m in, deep waters where I swim.  A host of backing singers join in delivering cool, soothing “Ooohs”.  Going immediately from the universe to the underverse in the song listing would be an understandable link in Ratcliffe & Maconi’s BBC Radio 6 feature, The Chain.  The song contrasts sharply with the previous, in pace and texture, in mood and setting.  External to internal.  Deep Waters is written and sung as if a very personal song.

 

The last four songs of the album are the most interesting and it’s good to hear Richard Hawley playing around with form, style, pace and lyrical content.  These closing songs sound to be tributes to some very influential musical sources.

 

We are verging on Roy Orbison territory in I’ll Never Get Over You.  Here we hear glimpses of Richard Hawley’s rich voice being worked to great effect.  It is basically about what it says in the title.  Another mournful number about loss.

 

And Time can be your friend again, speeds up and provides a new point of view that might be from a discarded lover, potential stalker, likely alcoholic.  Worrying about his absent love, drinking to forget, not wanting to be jealous, not wanting to cast himself into the dark river with its undertow. Do I really need to know what you’re doing, or do I?  

 

I am strongly reminded of David Gedge’s excellent excursions with his band Cinerama into lounge music, which were drawn from the concepts of soundtracks and TV series, as he told Sound on Sound in 2001.  I am not seeking comparisons, but when a song catapults the listener into such well-trodden territory, it can be distracting.  Of course, Richard Hawley delivers a faultless performance here.  It is a lot of sad and a little sinister.

 

It was at this point I checked to see how much more of the album was left.  The penultimate track When The Lights Go Out was one I found easier to appreciate .  A song for the lonely, but with a bit of defiance and spirit reverberating through this sing-along-alone number, for a mournful Friday night in on your tod.  You don‘t haunt me anymore he sings.  I liked this song so much I played it several times in a row.  In the days when everyone bought vinyl singles at Woolworth's this would have been in the Top Ten. A classic.

 

Finally, Hawley softly draws the curtains on the collection with 'Tis Night, a sweetly delivered song of acceptance, appropriately accompanied by mellow strings that lead to a kind finish. 

 

Should I review albums in this way, track-by-track?  By doing so I tend to treat each song as a single, when I ought hear it all through and then write about the overall aural experience.  There are some lovely individual tracks on In This City They Call You Love. Overall, it is a sad album, no worse for that.

Ricard Hawley heads out on tour starting in Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom on 2^nd June, winding up in Scarborough Spa on 20^th June, before a brace of big gigs in August at Beautiful Days, Devon (15^th to 18^th August) and Sheffield’s Don Valley Bowl during the August Bank Holiday weekend 29^th August). 

Tickets available from Richard Hawley's website here.

~

Spencer Ide

14th May 2024