When Richard Hawley first emerges as a be-quiffed silhouette against a white light and emits a swooping tenor-to-bass glissando to a double bass, piano and bouzouki backing (on ‘A Songbird’s Melody’) the entire audience gasps and swoons. He’s like a matinee idol springing from the pages of Teen Beat magazine, to give honey-throated melodic advice to a lovesick teen in a 1950s musical.
The illusion is broken slightly when he refers to the Olympia’s illustrious history, and how in the 19th century glory days it no doubt smelled of delicious oranges, “which is strange because it smells of piss now.” Hawley’s an odd character, really. With his ready quips and 1960s pop glow, he affects being a talented hack touring the working men’s clubs of north England, mining an untapped stream of epic but generic 1960s pop with a stand-up comedian’s reflexes against heckling (“I’m sorry mate, but as you can see I’ve got some company,” he quips to someone yelling from the balcony). Later he introduces ‘Open Up Your Door’ a song recently used in a Häagen-Dazs advert. “Judas!” yells a No Logo reading lefty from the audience. “Yeah,” says Hawley, “but not a skint Judas.”
Then from such deadpan Northern utterances we’re launched into the ethereal romantic world of his songs – all walking bass, twanging Shadows guitars, acoustic pickery, twinkling pianos, glittering lap-steel, glockenspiels and a luscious wash of sampled strings. And at the centre of it all there’s that truly authentic croon (which sounds on top form despite Hawley having a cold). Now, crooning – and its subtle emotional explorations of tone and timbre – aren’t common in these days of studied indie insouciance and X Factor style, look-at-me, vocal hyperactivity, so our resistance is lowered. And despite the fact that musically what Hawley does essentially involves reinventing the wheel, this reviewer and a room-full of grown adults still succumb to his voice like it’s a fatherly embrace. Lovely.