Richard Hawley has announced his 10th studio album ‘In This City They Call You Love’ – listen to new single ‘Two For His Heels’ below.
The Sheffield singer-songwriter is due to release the 12-track record on May 31 via BMG, following on from 2019’s ‘Further’. You can pre-order/pre-save it here.
- READ MORE: Richard Hawley talks his musical opening in London, Pulp, Arctic Monkeys and The Leadmill
To preview the forthcoming collection, Hawley has today (February 21) shared an atmospheric and cinematic song in the form ‘Two For His Heels’, which is “about a deal that goes wrong”.
The single serves as the opener to ‘In This City…’, and presents a “low blues rumble reminiscent of Link Wray and Duane Eddy”.
Per a press release, the album’s title comes from ‘People’ – an upcoming song about Sheffield’s “proud industrial past and the enduring determination of its citizens”.
“I’ve made three albums where I had the title before I’d even begun to record, where I had an agenda,” Hawley explained. “One was ‘Truelove’s Gutter’. Another was ‘Standing At The Sky’s Edge’ when I wanted to turn everything up and make the music a lot more aggressive, and then this one.
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“I wanted it to be multi-coloured in a way… focusing on the voice and what voices can do together. I deliberately only played a handful of guitar solos to keep it focused on voices, the song and space.”
A description reads: “‘In This City They Call You Love’ features 12 outstanding songs, many of which can be described as ‘vintage Hawley’ and are amongst some of the finest ballads he’s ever written and recorded.”
It adds that the LP contains “gorgeous melodies and arrangements” that “are accompanied by Hawley’s emotive and sonorous voice”.
The tracklist for Richard Hawley’s ‘In This City They Call You Love’ is:
1. ‘Two For His Heels’
2. ‘Have Love’
3. ‘Prism In Jeans’
4. ‘Heavy Rain’
5. ‘People’
6. ‘Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow’
7. ‘Deep Space’
8. ‘Deep Waters’
9. ‘I’ll Never Get Over You’
10. ‘Do I Really Need To Know?’
11. ‘When The Lights Go Out’
12. ‘‘Tis Night’
Speaking to NME in February 2023, Hawley said he was “itching” to get back into the studio to work on the follow-up to ‘Further’.
“I need to stop playing live for a while and record some of these songs that I’ve got,” he explained at the time. “I don’t know [what it will sound like] yet and won’t until I’m there. I don’t want to put any limits on it by saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to be this’.”
Hawley added: “I’ve got melodies and chords. I deliberately avoided writing lyrics during lockdown because I didn’t want to write a lockdown record.”
Last October saw the musician release a career-spanning compilation album, ‘Now Then: The Very Best Of Richard Hawley’.
Richard Hawley is set to head out on a UK and Ireland headline tour in May. You can see the full schedule and find any remaining tickets here.