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, , 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 is a song that Roy Orbison might easily have penned, while 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?” Ha.