Richard Hawley – Truelove’s Gutter

Who is Richard Hawley? Well, for starters, I’m increasingly convinced that he is the ultimate anti-hipster. In addition to his membership in the Britpop iconoclasts Pulp, he’s made six albums under his own name, and none of them could possibly be any further from what’s cool, trendy, or—God forbid—mainstream. The man sings in a voice that sounds like Johnny Cash crooning a la Bing Crosby, all quiet dignity and restraint. His music is slow and impossibly quiet. His range of influences consists mostly of rockabilly and classic pop idioms that predate The Beatles, and, in an age when irony sells like hotcakes, Hawley peddles unabashed sentiment.

In other words, he’s a hopeless romantic who plays pop music of aching, exquisite beauty and enveloping sadness. He wouldn’t make it past the first round of American Idol, and I doubt he’d fare much better with the Pitchfork crowd. But their loss is our gain: Hawley’s music has absolutely no counterpart or touchstone in modern music, which makes it indispensable.

In principle, he shares some common ground with his old bandleader, Jarvis Cocker. Both of them share a love for classic pop songcraft, though Hawley’s understanding of it goes back about thirty years beyond the place where Cocker’s stops. But Cocker employs his traditionalist aesthetic in the service of music that is by turn raunchy, cynical, and devilishly witty. Hawley’s music is simply romantic—and on his latest, Truelove’s Gutter, he even leaves the rockabilly and traditional pop behind, making what surely qualifies as the purest distillation of his musical essence yet.

Truelove’s Gutter comes on the heels of the critically-lauded albums Cole’s Corner and Lady’s Bridge, two nearly-perfect marvels of pop songcraft and true rock and roll romanticism that condensed love and heartache into something staggeringly sad and beautiful; Hawely’s songs were brimming with melancholy and gloom, but his melodic gift and sturdy pop construction skills made the music enlivening, not dispiriting.

The new album is something very different, though no less awe-inspiring or moving. Truelove’s Gutter is expansive, consisting of only eight songs but feeling like an epic (two of the songs hit the ten-minute mark). None of the songs here fit the mold of the perfect pop single or galloping rockabilly that marked the last two records. Instead, the album plays out like one big tone poem, ebbing and flowing and enveloping the listener completely. It’s incredibly quiet—no one in pop music uses silence or empty space as effectively as Hawley—but at times it explodes into perfectly cathartic releases of emotion and grandeur. It is at once lush and minimalist: Exotic instruments float through the ether like the “ghostly memories” Hawley sings about, yet the sheer quietness of the thing is serenely disarming.

Hawley is a rock and roll poet in the purest sense, and his songs are profound and simple. Simple phrases and unadorned language unearth powerful feelings of loss and regret, yet Hawley leaves no doubt that he believes in true love. And yet, these songs may be written from the gutter, but the album is not without its peaks. It’s a song cycle about love and loss and renewal, and the opening track, “As the Dawn Breaks,” is a paean to new love’s promise that captures hopefulness and renewal with a simplicity that is nevertheless inspiring; it makes love’s collapse in “Ashes on the Fire” that much more devastating. The album begins at the start of the story and moves fluidly to its conclusion, and final song “Don’t You Cry” leaves the listener feeling awestruck and emotionally satisfied, its sadness not crippling but cathartic.

The album is awash in memory, reflection, and regret—but also hope. There is loss here, but never fatalism, and redemption is always dancing around the edges. “For Your Lover Give Some Time” might be the record’s true emotional centerpiece, in which the ghosts of the past and the hope of the future intermingle in Hawley’s rich poetry: “I will give up these cigarettes/ Stay at home and watch you mend the tears in your dress/ . . . Maybe I will drink a little less/ Come home early and not complain about the deaths/ And give you flowers from the graveyard now and then/ For your lover give some time.”

That’s Hawley’s gift. His music is slow and tender, and requires patience and careful attention. Its reward is immersive and engulfing, experiential and transporting—and though it’s deeply sad, it leaves the listener not with gloom, but wonder. Truelove’s Gutter is his finest achievement yet—a work of art with no precedent and no chance of ever being repeated, another landmark etching of the heart’s geography from a soulful trailblazer who is now totally out of time, and as essential as ever.

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Tagged as: Pop, Sheffield, UK

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