"Someone call 999, Richard Hawley's been robbed!" was the cry from Alex Turner's mouth as The Arctic Monkey's won the 2006 Mercury Music Prize. Alas, this was the first time a young and impressionable music fan had heard of Coles Corner or any previous work from the Sheffield songsmith. Being naïve and easily led back then I stuck to Dirty Pretty Things and the such like (it was pretty cool in the common room back then). The Spring of 2008 then swiftly came around and the sparkly extravaganza that was the Brit Awards had arrived and Hawley was nominated for Best British Male Performer on the back of Lady's Bridge. Once again he was overlooked by me and the esteemed panel as they chose Mark Ronson on the night...
Our adventure next takes us to Benicassim festival 2008, when six up-to-their-eyes in Heineken lads stood in silence as Hawley strummed and sung his way through a set of sheer beauty. If you look at his wikipedia page, Hawley claimed "that it was the best festival audience he had ever played to". We returned home bruised, beaten and broke men. Regrettably we had no euros left over to buy any of his back catalogue.
September 21st 2009 brings us Truelove's Gutter, Hawley's sixth studio album. From what I've heard from it and since having bought previous albums, Truelove's Gutters' arsenal carries the usual minimalist production dovetailing Hawley's voice and exquisite guitar solo's. He recently told the BBC that the album was inspired by particularly dark periods in his life and those of others: "You have to engage with people immediately around you and I realised that quite a few people that I really loved, whilst I was away, were probably not having a great time...Not that I was praying on them writing songs, but I wrote songs inspired by some of their situations - not in a judgemental way. I tried to understand, because a lot of it is pretty dark."
Lead single 'For Your Lover Give Some Time' is certainly representative of these comments and should firmly establish Hawley as one of Britain's leading lights in male solo performance.
From a nostalgic Martin, Goodbye.
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