Richard Hawley is one of those musicians you're encouraged to have an opinion about. I'm sure friends and acuaintances of mine that frequent music discussion hroups have strongly formed opinions of the man and his oevre.' His best album is....' 'It's all been downhill since...' I preferred him when he was in The Longpigs.' And so on.
I have no real opinion of him, not having extended exposure to any of his albums or seen him play. I listened to his latest album In This City They Call Love yesterday and quite liked it.
He's an odd fellow Hawley. He's not a particularly good looking man. He doesnt have a particularly good voice or write particularly outstanding songs. He's alright. He'll write a song like Heavy Rain which turned my head four songs into the album and you got the impression that it would inspire couples that loved each other to turn to each other on the sofa and share a moment.
He strikes me as a Sixties performer in some respects. His songs evoke the peculiarly English melancholy of a film like David Essex's That'll be The Day. This City They Call Love is haunted by a particularly distinctive melancholy.that reminds you of fairground rides. Del Shannon and Roy Orbison albums and the joys of browsing second hand shops on bleak Autumnal afternoons,
This isn't a particularly great record but it's difficult to find fault with it either. This is another Richard Hawley album to discuss with the Richard Hawley fan in your life.
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