H. Hawkline: 'Milk For Flowers'
“I came clean with her / I did it on my knees”, opens H. Hawkline AKA Huw Evans on his new album ‘Milk For Flowers’, out today on Heavenly Recordings. His first in six years and arguably the most personal, revealing record the Welsh artist has ever released, he tears down the barrier of grief, dropping part of his veil of nonsensical absurdity in favour of deeply real lyricism, backed by spectacular vintage-pop tones.
Album opener ‘Milk For Flowers’ sits somewhere between Todd Rundgren and The Beatles, as Evans warbles his sins confessionally, “I have guilt / And that guilt is mine,” amid showcase keys that drive the song to a crescendo-like conclusion. Glam rock number ‘Plastic Man’ is as punchy as its predecessor, and ‘Suppression Street’ is a viciously replayable cut that channels some of the hazy sleaze found in Evans’ former Los Angeles home.
Divinely drenched in soul and feeling, Evans has expressed his will to sing on ‘Milk For Flowers’. Reflecting on the vocals present on his two previous records, 2017’s ‘I Romanticize’ and 2015’s ‘In The Pink Of Condition’, he described them as “flat and emotionless.” The album’s midpoint ‘Denver’ provides a near-perfect antithesis to this line of thought; pacifically heartbreaking, glistening keys sax play over a litany of dreamy offerings. While, on ‘Mostly’, he attempts to decrypt the mundane nature of life and death, jokingly pondering “You ask me how I want to be remembered when I’m gone / Like a useful man / Shaded by a shaky hand.”
A perfect combination of light and shade, Evans himself has spoken about finding the right balance between the record’s dark subject matter and the uplifting, piano-led sound that perforates each number so eloquently. Album closer ‘Empty Room’ is a perfect paradigm of this thought process; he croons “My dad he don’t sleep anymore,” as gentle keys begin to create space, leaving time for contemplation, and driving home the anguish and heartbreak that sit deep within the record’s recesses.
Produced by longtime collaborator and confidant Cate Le Bon, ‘Milk For Flowers’ is Evans’ most accomplished yet. His voice is a consistent pleasure as he meddles between gentle harmonies and enunciated falsettos, and his knack for finding strange, otherworldly comparisons to more temporal ways of thinking play marvellously into the sweet, tender arrangements that are handled in delicately magical fashion. It’s about time he receives the respect and adoration he deserves.
