I See Hawks In LA
Album: New Kind Of Lonely
Label: Western Seeds
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.iseehawks.com

'New Kind of Lonely' is something of a "back to basics" album. A couple of acoustic guitars, upright bass and vocals were recorded around "exotic microphones into lovely pre-amps" and then supplemented with banjo, fiddle, snare and dobro. The band financed the recording themselves and then launched a successful kickstarter campaign (the $7,000.00 target was exceeded by $ 2,188.00) to raise funds for the mixing, mastering, manufacturing and marketing.

The result is truly magnificent with freshness and clarity to the tracks that I suspect can only be achieved with recording in this way. Try to imagine a warm summer evening (difficult at the moment I know) after the sun has set. The beers are cold, the fire is crackling, the voices are harmonising and the strings all combining to make sounds you dream of. This is what 'New Kind of Lonely' sounds like.

Good playing obviously needs good songs and this album is full of them; 'River Run' is brooding, 'Dear Flash' pleading and 'Bohemian Highway' lonesome. There are about 2,000 road miles between Nashville and Los Angeles but the distance between commercial Nashville country and this is so much further.

The only obstacle to this being a perfect album is the inclusion of 'Hunger Mountain Breakdown'. It is a fine, fine bluegrass track with the requisite banjo picking and fiddle sawing yet it feels out of place (although, with the line "last night I dreamed about the ocean", maybe this is deliberately so).

Much as I love pedal steel and twangy telecasters I am glad that I See Hawks In L.A. abstained for this album. It is a master class in acoustic country.

John 'The Jacket' Hawes