Reverent references to Duane Eddy, Pops Staples, Scott Walker and other giants of the vinyl era are never far from Richard Hawley’s lips. But with his new album, In This City They Call You Love, Hawley has produced a work that deserves to stand alongside that of the legends he has always admired.
You’d never hear him say that himself, of course, as there’s a genuine and abiding humility in his approach to music. But the tender, yearning ballad I’ll Never Get Over You is a song that Roy Orbison might easily have penned, while Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow sounds like a lost, lovelorn Eddie Cochrane ballad.
Yet Hawley somehow manages to wear his influences lightly, like a well-fitting jacket that suits him and that he makes his own. And if the past looms large in his work, its main purpose is to highlight the unbroken threads of memory, pride and love that stretch from childhood to the present day and imbue it with meaning.
A particularly enduring theme in Hawley’s music is his home city of Sheffield – he’s named several of his albums after its landmarks, and the place and its people are a continuing wellspring of inspiration. Ironically, however, it was a chance encounter with visitors from out of town that gave his latest album its name.
“It was something I overheard some people saying,” Hawley recalls. “They weren’t from Sheffield and one of them said, ‘Oh, in this city everybody calls you love,’ and it went in like a missile. I just heard that, literally walking past a cafe and I went, ‘Whoa, I’m having that.’ You know?”
Hawley acknowledges that songwriters have to have something of the magpie about them, always ready to snatch up a golden phrase and wing home with it, to be tucked away for later use.
He adds that the best songs come from that part of our mind that isn’t caught up in mundane, day-to-day decision-making. Words and phrases overheard by chance can open the taps to a sudden, instinctive flow of inspiration that yields better songs than conscious effort, he argues.
“You can hit the bullseye without aiming for it. But if you aim for the bullseye, you’re probably not going to hit it. Technically, music is numbers and letters, mathematics and literacy. But actually it’s something that you cannot define. You can’t bottle it. You know what I mean?
“I write all the songs walking the dogs now because there’s something about putting one foot in front of the other, where something flips in your mind… with rational, normal thought, that you need to survive on Earth, your yes/no synapses are flipping all the time in your mind.
“But there’s something that happens when you’re doing something rudimentary, like walking the dogs, washing the pots or whatever… you hit the bullseye without aiming for it. And that’s the best advice I can give anybody who’s going to write a song. If you try to write a song, it’ll probably be shit.”
We can only conclude that Richard’s dogs must have had plenty of exercise recently because every song on the album hits home emotionally. The production is simple yet beautiful, a touch less orchestral than some of his previous records perhaps but all the more direct and powerful for it.
A key theme is memory and how we live with it – of loves and loyalties that fade all too quickly into the past, yet from which we can never wholly free ourselves.
“I think music gives you the ability to accept the fact that maybe we are mortal, but also to hover like a kestrel in time,” Richard reflects. “You’ve got more time than you realise, to think about things.”
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