I’m not saying all his songs sound the same, though they all have the same mood – a specifically Northern kind of swooning romantic melancholia.
Perhaps they’re just too intense: after immersion in his overwhelmingly emotional Sheffield soundscape, you’re sated. Spent. One song is enough.
So I could perhaps have picked any one of his songs to play but I’m going to pick this one, not least because I love the title – Remorse Code – and its metaphor of a shipwreck in what is a lament for a good friend who lost everything through drug addiction.
The music is spare: acoustic and electric guitars intertwine and the gentle drum sound comes from the drummer, Dean Beresford, playing them with his bare hands. And the melody is just gorgeous, as are the reverb-heavy guitar solos Hawley unfurls, perfectly underscoring the emotion of the lyric. “Those white lines made your eyes wide / Unenlightened lies in those white lines.”
Hawley describes it as “a love song for a lost friend and a lost future” – but also a reflection of the man he might have become himself. “It’s about a pal of mine who’s in a bit of a mess, pretty much where I was ten years or so ago except I got out of the car before it crashed into the wall,” he explained in an interview later.
“He’s crashed his car, gone through the wall, fell of the cliff, trashed it totally but still it drives on. He lost his family, house, job, the lot – cocaine – and STILL does it. I am not judging as I live in a glasshouse, so to speak, but I stopped because I didn’t want to lose my loved ones and the love and respect of my mates.
“Also I wasn’t too keen on dying just yet. It’s too high a price to pay but he doesn’t seem to get it. I hope the shock of it makes him wake up. I had no other options left with which to help him. It’s a mirror held up right in his big beautiful daft face. I love the man, always will.”