If there was one album I kept on coming back to this year, it was Richard Hawley’s exquisite late night masterpiece, Truelove’s Gutter.

Sheffield’s son of sadness made his darkest and most experimental work to date – Truelove’s Gutter was by no means an instant record – in fact it was quite difficult to deal with at first.You had to work at it, get to know it and explore it, but it was well worth the effort.  

Forsaking Hawley’s usual rockabilly stylings for lengthy instrumental passages, guitar solos and strange sounds (including a glass harmonica and musical saw), this was a moody, cinematic album with a sad, haunted, world-weary feel.

Opener As The Dawn Breaks set the scene perfectly – creeping up on the listener like the first rays of sunshine on a frosty winter morning. Hawley sings of ‘roofslates, hope hung on every washing line and a songbird’s melody’ – pure poetry.

The spiralling Remorse Code dealt with cocaine addiction, Soldier On sounded like Roy Orbison fronting Spiritualized (when the wall of guitars and strings kicks in at 2:45 is simply one of my favourite musical moments of 2009) and Don’t Get Hung Up In Your Soul was shadowy, melancholy country with an eerie undercurrent, thanks to a zither and David Coulter’s saw playing.

On a lighter note, the beautiful Open Up Your Door was a big orchestral pop ballad and first single,For Your Lover Give Some Time sounded like a standard from the ’50s or ’60s. Man, it could have been sung by Matt Monro or Sinatra.

Over a simple, sparse arrangement of just acoustic guitar, cello and violin, Hawley crooned this gorgeous, yet pithy, love song that he wrote especially

for his wife, Helen.

When he promises to drink a little less, give up cigarettes and come home early every now and then, it makes me weak at the knees.

“The sounds in my head on a lot of the tracks – I didn’t even know what they were called! I wanted it to be a listening experience from start to finish, where you couldn’t just pause it and go off and watch Coronation Street or

whatever. Sonically, it flows. It’s not jumping all over the place. It just has a mood that goes through the whole thing.”

It certainly does.

Soulsavers’ latest offering Broken was by no means an easy listen, but
it was one of the most atmospheric, haunting and downright brilliant
records I’d heard in a long time.

 
The third album from the English production duo of Rich Machin and Ian
Glover saw them reunited with gloom-monger Mark Lanegan (Screaming
Trees, Queens of The Stone Age) who lent his whiskey-soaked and
nicotine-ravaged vocals to the majority of songs.

 
Sheffield baritone Richard Hawley also put in an appearance, as did
Jason Pierce (Spiritualized), Mike Patton (Faith No More) and Gibby
Haynes (Butthole Surfers).

Yep, it was one hell of a (funeral) party, soundtracked by sinister
pysche-rock, sombre ballads,edgy trip-hop and spiritual soul and
gospel – an album that was both unsettling and beautiful.

You Will Miss Me When I Burn, written by Will Oldham,

was a piano and strings lament, with Lanegan crooning,

“When you have no-one, no-one can hurt you.”

If it didn’t move you, then truly you did not have a heart.

 
The twilight country shuffle of Shadows Fall (with Hawley on backing
vocals) was one of the highlights – all Midnight Cowboy harmonica and
‘weeping’ strings, while Pharoah’s Chariot (with Pierce) was a deathly
Nick Cave-esque track – with a mournful orchestral arrangement and
murderous twangin’ guitar.

There was also an epic take on Gene Clark’s Some Misunderstanding,

with some ragged Neil Young-style riffing.

Sometimes when I’m playing Broken I have an unsettling feeling that
maybe I’m listening to the sort of music that serial killers have on
their headphones when they’re going about their business.

Then to lighten the mood, I just look at the sleevenotes; ‘Recorded in
Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Sydney &
Stoke-on-Trent’. . .