H. Hawkline – In The Pink Of Condition

Description

Although little is known about H Hawkline at this stage, international record collector, occasional DJ partner and hirsute head Andy Votel divulges that he is “from a family lineage that comprises of 70s radio DJs and Welsh Horror movie stars.” He continues: “H Hawkline’s own place in the limelight often cascades and intertwines with the likes of his close friends Cate Le Bon [who produced this album], Sweet Baboo and Gruff Rhys. As an adept multi-intrumentalist main vein Huw Evans claws his influences from a broad outernational record collection comprising of Faustian Krautrock, Welsh Damp Wave, Turk Jerk and South American pre-punk.” 

An album of “strange pop” (words borrowed from Huw), ‘In The Pink Of Condition’ is a controlled explosion of laser-guided guitar melody (think a careering Television show or Pavement outside the original site of Spillers) and whipsmart bi-lingual wordplay. 

Although reluctant to cite a shopping list’s worth of influences, Huw nods to two permanent inspirations – the maverick US author Richard Brautigan (the Hawkline name is appropriated from Brautigan’s 1974 ‘gothic western’ ‘The Hawkline Monster’) and a just-turned-solo Paul McCartney (Huw namechecks ‘Ram’, an album coincidentally recorded when the once-and-future Beatle was also twenty-nine). From the former, a wistful ways with words – songs constructed as slices of life, surrealist observations on the everyday. From the latter – what else would one ask for other than a just smidgeon of McCartney’s sixth sense for abundant, tumbling melody?