Hollow Meadows
It seems Richard Hawley’s journey into psych-rock on 2012’s *Standing At the Sky’s Edge* was just a detour. Here, his world-weary croon glides through more familiar Hawley touchstones: classic pop, sumptuous arrangements and folky intimacy. Befitting a record partly recorded in his garden shed, *Hollow Meadows* opens up his personal spaces with 11 elegant tales of love, regret, hurt and hope. Everything coalesces best on “What Love Means”, a heart-tugging sigh of parental pride and anguish.
Hollow Meadows strips back the dense walls of feedback-crusted guitar noise that characterised 2012's uncharacteristically bristly Standing At The Sky's Edge and the epic structures of 2009's Truelove's Gutter.
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