WHICH WAY. The title of one of the songs of Richard Hawley’s new album HOLLOW MEADOWS. A bit more energetic, that track, but even the electric guitars somehow glow in blue velvet. Playing a soft wild card for some seconds. And some more seconds. Hawley looks on the cover like a time traveler from early rock’n’roll-ballad days. Retro is his second name, but he makes a lot of good choices here: a vibe of Fairport Convention here, some Renaissance memories triggered, too. Renaissance, the band, my friend, not the era. There’s a lot of variety in his zigzagging along long gone decades. I learned the word zigzagging (is it zig-zagging or zigzaging? It’s certainly not zigzaging) from a Robert Wyatt-song on DONDESTAN. Was it DONDESTAN, was it SIGHT OF THE WIND? Yesterday’s newspaper was zigzagging, zig-zaging (no!), zigzagging through the air, like a game of the wind. A word that creates a kind of vertigo. The outskirts of time, a recurring theme in Hawley’s HOLLOW MEADOWS. He sits in a corner of the cafe, in an old Sheffield district, worn-out, kind of rotten. Of course, there’s a ballroom around the corner. I’m there, too. I’m living in these songs tonight. Do you remember the magic of meeting a strange woman under circling lights, neon with a nostalgic touch, and not asking for a coffee, or a minute, but just for a good fuck? You say it with all your heart, so there’s nothing wrong with that. One of the things I’ve never been afraid to ask (well, after I turned 28). Some say no, some say yes, some say 100 dollars. So I slept with about 175 women. With a lot of Brian Eno in the background. Music for sexual healing. Music for indoor sports. Music for aspetic toilet rooms at airports. Music for films. And, yes, I varied the question. I said coffee, or mocca, or Americano, I said green tea, I said Sex on the Beach, I said Caipirinho. And I said: girl, I prefer to be fucked east of soft core, take me hard. And I said ice cream, and I said whisky bar.
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