New Roses
When I was at university, a seemingly distant but devastatingly mere three years ago, I spent most of my degree doing very little theological work at all – not, unfortunately, advisable for a theology student. When I should have been writing examinations of St Augustine’s ‘Confessions’, or picking apart the hebrew language, I was in fact dossing about watching gigs, interviewing musicians and writing for The Mic, our university’s semi-official magazine.
Two of my three university years were spent as joint reviews editor for the magazine. Every now and again we’d have a meeting of all the writers and we’d throw CDs out to whoever wanted to review them. More often than not, I ended up with whatever no-one else wanted. This is, if anyone asks, how the Jonas Brothers’ debut album and the first Saturdays album found their way into my collection. The second Saturdays album, I’ll admit, arrived in said collection of my own accord.
My favourite find amongst the collection of rejected albums that found their way to me was by an artist called Blue Roses. A young folk musician who was born Laura Groves but at some point decided Blue Roses sounded prettier. It does, I suppose, though I imagine she still uses ‘Laura’ for CVs and tax forms and the like.
Her album was incredible – unlike anything I’d heard. Effortlessly elaborate but almost unbearably intimate and hushed. She flirted with musical ideas that Kate Bush had once toyed with, but above all else she was a unique entity who had, on her debut, created an album so dream-like that it stayed in my bedside CD player for three solid months. And then… nothing.
Not a noise. Not for three years. In the list in my mind entitled ‘Perfect Debuts’, her self-titled album is one of only two never to have a follow-up. Instead, universal radio silence.
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Julie Hawk came to the Folkroom by virtue of a double-recommendation. In a period of a few weeks, completely independent of one another, both O. Chapman and our very own Andrew Butler suggested we invite Julie down to play our gig. I’m a big fan of recommendations, and before long Julie was playing our gig at The Queens Head. Immediately her music struck me.
It is, above all else, terrific. As enchanting as anyone might hope, Julie Hawk’s voice is a strange and indescribable entity. Rather than accurately touch upon what she is to listen to, it is best to skirt around the suburbs of her voice – those sounds that come close to hers, with aspects that echo but never quite match the metropolitan of sound between them.
There are hints of Joanna Newsom – Julie Hawk has tics and flicks of the voice, but does not sing with the cartoonish child-like voice Newsom can inhabit. Certainly, though, Julie would share a county with Newsom, would be the neighbouring city. There is a touch of Kate Bush too. But no-one could ever claim Julie Hawk has stolen anything from these artists – she simply shares the same vocal geography. And there is one final similarity in both music and voice – one that was greatly welcomed when first she played our gigs, and one that is fully-realised on her new EP, for which she hosted a launch party yesterday.
I don’t know if Julie has ever heard of Blue Roses, let alone inhabited her album like it was a warm cottage in a barren landscape in much the same way I did. But it has been a pleasure – a real, unparalleled pleasure – after three years of waiting to find a worthy follow-up to the album I fell in love with and have never really got over.
Julie Hawk’s EP – self-titled, like Blue Roses’ album – is as close to a follow-up as I might ever get. Musically it is a moving and thoroughly gorgeous record, full and warm and overflowing with sound – after the four or five times I’ve seen her play with just one other guitarist it’s a luxury to hear her songs so full of the life given by other instruments. But the real champion of the EP is Julie’s spectacular voice. On ‘Maps’ she plays around with the lyrics like a cat with a toy – they are hers to throw around as she likes and she controls their every movement, dancing about them and pulling them up and down with her. The opener, ‘The Value of Gold’ takes those vocal flirtations and uses them to a majestically emotional effect. It’s a wonder to listen to, and is unlike anything you’ve heard – she employs all those same tricks that once I fell for on Blue Roses album but, like all good follow-ups, she has developed the sound and now gifts the listener with a different experience entirely. Obviously, the reason for this is that it actually is a different experience entirely.
As with her echoes of Bush and Newsom, Julie Hawk reminds me of Blue Roses completely by accident, and without any real connection. But it’s exciting for me nonetheless – there are few pleasures greater than finding an artist who can be compared, even loosely, to any of those three and providing Julie Hawk keeps on writing, keeps on performing and keeps on perfecting, there’s no reason not to believe perhaps one day she’ll no longer be compared to those acts, but will have other acts compared with her.
