Thanks to Ryan, my brother Nicholas and I scored some tickets to see Hawksley Workman at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto a few weeks ago. I had only listened to his new album, Between the Beautifuls, a few times before his show and I was kinda ho-hum about it. I'm not crazy about the slide guitar alt-country smells. And no, it's not because I don't like alt-country. Quite the contrary. I think I know the sound that he's going for, but Hawksley's soaring operatic voice and the rest of the production doesn't really fit. To me this album is kind of an unfocused cut. So far I think Hawksley's albums have been variable but cohesive: lyrically strong alt-pop/rock (For Him and the Girls) to high-sheen pop productions (Lover/Fighter). I actually really liked his last album, Treeful of Starling.
To his credit, I liked his tracks from Between the Beautifuls much more in-concert. I felt the instrumentation was much more appropriate: he played mostly on electric guitar with a whammy bar, his band mate was on the fiddle, and his horn player spent most of his time on bass clarinet. The alt-country touches were well-placed and lovely. The track "Oh You Delicate Heart" was excellent. He had an awesome rocked-out rendition of "Striptease" from Delicious Wolves that moved into a sweet double-time version of "Jealous of Your Cigarette" (and all the things you do with it).
The concert was a bit self-indulgent in a way that only a personality like Hawksley could get away with. He had this little mini synthesizer and drum kit (seriously mini: about 2 feet tall) that he played on for the first couple songs. It was funny at first, but they sounded awful so I don't know why he kept playing on them. Also, half way through the concert, his entire band came up to the front of the stage and went unmic'd for a song. It was a nice touch to get closer to the audience, but of course I couldn't hear anything and when they decided to do a second song sans-amplification I was just annoyed.
All that considered, it was still a nice show. It was 2.5 hours of nothing but Hawksley so I got my fix in. I only saw him once before ... it was a number of years ago up at Yonge and Eglinton for one of those Toronto summer street festivals. If you're a die-hard Hawksley fan, buy the new album to complete your collection. Otherwise, his older stuff is still unquestionably his best.
