H. Hawkline – ‘Milk For Flowers’ album review
It’s not very often that an album profoundly impacts you. In an era of rampant and usually hollow irony, albums of natural substance are an increasingly rare prospect, leaving it up to those unafraid to turn their back on the zeitgeist to deliver something of consequence: Enter H. Hawkline. The Welsh singer-songwriter – real name Huw Evans – has returned with his fifth album, Milk For Flowers, and not only is it his most accomplished to date, but it is also his most emotionally affecting, offering sweetness to the tail-end of winter.
However, it’s not saccharine or overcooked, Hawkline delivers a triumph in the face of a personal tempest without giving too much away. It’s a masterclass in letting the listener do the work. Brimming with his trademark surrealism and varied instrumentation helmed by familiar faces such as Tim Presley, John Parish, Davey Newington and more, the album sees Hawkline distil the quality of his craft. Undoubtedly, this elevation was helped by the crisp and nuanced production from regular collaborator Cate Le Bon.
Adding another dimension to the opus and underpinning its sincere essence is that it is a sonic conduit for Hawkline to process a tremendous personal tragedy of the kind that most people only experience twice. This, married with his enigmatic lyrics and assorted textures, instils Milk For Flowers with an almost otherworldy pull that makes you press play as soon as the final track fades out, desiring to collect every breadcrumb its creator leaves.
Of her role in helping her old friend bring his new album to life, Cate Le Bon adroitly said: “I watched my dear friend, H.Hawkline, fold into himself and extract from a terrible time an album so exquisitely raw, yet deftly graceful”, with her continuing that he “sits melancholy at the table with absurdity and no-one bats an eye. Not without effort but always with a natural hand moving pieces around from the inside out. It’s a beautiful thing to be continuously moved and surprised by an old friend.”
That is it. While a distinct vein of melancholy courses through the album, Hawkline offsets it with joyful moments of indie, electropop, psychedelia and, at points, Motown-indebted dynamics. This sonic diversity operates with his penchant for technicolour absurdity to create a body of work that can be attributed to every kind of experience, not just the heartbreaking.
For instance, during the upbeat opening track, ‘Milk For Flowers’, he descants in the hook, “I feel like a nun picking roses, and he never comes when he promises”. Then, later in the album, on ‘It’s A Living’, the Cardiff native ponders whether those on the radio have a job of worth and spares a moment’s thought for the feelings of seagulls. The latter song is a marvellous discussion of life’s peculiarities, complete with one of the album’s most infectious choruses, of which there are many.
A full-bodied record; after listening to Milk For Flowers on numerous occasions, I’m yet to even approach tiring of it. The title track remains as punchy as ever, as does the glam-rock of its successor, ‘Plastic Man’. Then, the stoned dream of the third track, ‘Suppression Street’, channels the hazy essence of the city Hawkline used to call home, Los Angeles. Largely thanks to the glistening keys and sax, the third piece lifts the listener out of the damp inertia of British winter, with Hawkline’s lyrics some of the best on the album, painting him as a Pierrot-like figure, chastising himself for having this naturally complicated mesh of feelings. “I wanna die happy”, he then sings during the next and penultimate track, ‘Mostly’.
The final piece on Milk For Flowers and its most recent single, ‘Empty Room’, is the finest of the bunch. A slowly-unfolding ballad, it brings the curtains down perfectly on the rest of the album. Singing of the titular room that alludes to the death of a loved one, Hawkline honestly reveals at one point, “I never knew that I could go to pieces”. Throughout the track, these kinds of poetic flourishes are enriched by the almost meditative pace of the music, with the expressive harmonies of the piano accentuating proceedings.
As the rhythm then changes towards the end, Hawkline delivers his most cutting lyric on the record: “My dad, he don’t sleep anymore”, he laments. The most explicit reference to the hardship he’s endured over the past few years, it is made all the more profound by the way it completely relinquishes his usual shield of surrealism. It’s a masterful way of letting go of the recent past.
It’s a guarantee Milk For Flowers will be on the end-of-year lists. It’s fantastic.
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