Richard Hawley - In This City They Call You Love

In a forthcoming interview with CLASH, Richard Hawley describes this, his tenth solo effort, as “odd because it doesn’t have a tempo-related flow”. It’s the right of the artist to critique his own work in such a way but, as is typical of the Sheffield songsmith, he does both himself and the work a disservice. Indeed, the very unpredictability of this fine effort is its strength.

The dichotomy lies in the album’s inspiration: once again, the Steel City informs his writing process. For every new slice of gentrification in any UK city, the people and outlook remain stoic. As such, for every ‘Have Love’, a boisterous, simple but effective R&B shuffle with splintered, almost church-bell guitar and an earnest-yet-required message, there’s a ‘Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow’. Surely a result of his performance with John Grant at last year’s Patsy Cline tribute, it’s a sweetly sad country ballad which feels out of its time. 

The gunslinging ‘Two For His Heels’ is grizzly and saturnine, all twanging guitar and echoing drumsticks, but the title comes from a term in the game Cribbage, overheard by Hawley in the working men’s club next to his house.

https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/richard-hawley-in-this-city-they-call-you-love/