Hawksley Workman C / D

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Camp as hell but can't help smiling every time i hear "no beginning no end" from "last night we were the delicious wolves" album

― Peter Dee, Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I never got his second album, but I used to be in Hamilton a lot and my friends and I would always end up at his shows there or here in Toronto.. Classic, very classic live, and props for the first/only album I've heard.

― Alexis (Alexis), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 20:42 (twenty-two years ago)

For Him & The Girls is classic, a completely pompous try-anything medley of wailing ballads and sleepy sweet folk and Waits-ish romps into nowhere. His voice is the main event and he sells every wild idiosyncracy. He carries the true one-man solo thing very well in his recordings... a labour of love, you can tell.

Since that album he's gone into straighter arrangements and ever-campier lyrics ("Jealous of Your Cigarette"), but the talent remains.

― gazuga (gazuga), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 22:15 (twenty-two years ago)

His first album is classick, full stop. It's great in all the right ways: well-written, wonderfully played, a bit goofball but not zany, and just the right amount of overwrought camp.

The second album is more problematic; I think it would have been perfect if he'd dumped the first two songs. But those first two songs man, they just ruin the album utterly in so many ways. One of the joys of the first album was his subtlety, and those two songs on Beautiful Wolves are so unsubtle that it's hard to swallow. (Personally I find them both, well, gross.)

The Xmas mini-album is much better, suggestive but not too over the top. He definitely has a way with a phrase and he makes good use of it most of the time.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 8 April 2003 22:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, it's like he started believing his own press, and began to really stink up the country.
total flake with a great voice

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I have to admit I have no idea who Hawksley Workman is.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 05:33 (twenty-two years ago)

congratulations, roger, you now have something in common with 99.999999 per cent of the world and 87 per cent of Canada.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 05:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, ok, but...I'm never not in on ANYthing! :)

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 05:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I've only got the second album, and I LIKE the first two songs, which is strange, as I don't really like glam rock but I LOVE Tom Waits-type stylings. I'd be interested to hear the first album. I once compared him, rather erroneously, to Chicago's Bobby Conn. I expect that's because I haven't heard the first album.

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 10:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Saw him supporting Tindersticks last year and thought he was great. Picked up both albums on the way out and they're good but not as good as he was live. Live he reminded me a lot of Alex Harvey, although it doesn't come across like that on the albums. Classic.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 9 April 2003 10:41 (twenty-two years ago)

seven years pass...

saw him play massey hall last night. it was spectacular. for those of you who are unfamiliar, here's a sampling of his work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3b3VKt0bqw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHoGH10FURw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PJj2A3Uio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH-RIiMN6Xc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FffxRAnYmIU

― borntohula, Monday, 26 April 2010 04:59 (fifteen years ago)

Hawksley is awesome. He's pretty prolific -- his last several albums have gone back and forth between quickly recorded acoustic stuff and high-gloss production that at times veers into U2 territory. I can't help but prefer his flamboyant, emotive first two sets. Saw him at Schuba's last year for the first time in six years (he seems to do much better in Europe) and there were flashes of brilliance, but it's like he was trying to bore and alienate us with endless, noodly jams. Glad to hear he can still get it together though.

― Fastnbulbous, Monday, 26 April 2010 18:22 (fifteen years ago)

awwww I am the second post in this thread. Old school! I still haven't bothered with his new stuff... shame on me!

― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Monday, 26 April 2010 18:38 (fifteen years ago)

yeah his releases have become really inconsistent, and it's a bit frustrating. there are still moments of greatness though, like the last track i posted above, which is from his latest.

part of me thinks his turn toward pop and sheen in his own songwriting stems from the fact that he moonlights as a songwriter now for "pretty 18-year-olds." he revealed during saturday night's set that he had been flown to sweden once to pen a song for kylie minogue (hardly an 18 year old, but definitely pretty). he doesn't seem to be using the workman name for those songwriting credits, however, since there's nothing out-of-the-ordinary listed on his AMG page. there might be a better place to search for that information, but i can't seem to find it. i know he wrote a song for the last canadian idol winners, but from the sounds of it, he's been writing a lot more frequently than that.

― borntohula, Monday, 26 April 2010 18:39 (fifteen years ago)

Yeah, Hawksley is extremely frustrating because he alternates between albums that are gorgeous and albums where he's on the edge of being a meathead (but only occasionally slipping over the edge), and you never know what you're gonna get when you put the album on for the first time. I guess that makes him interesting, even if I can't bring myself to fully embrace his career.

― Sean Carruthers, Monday, 26 April 2010 20:56 (fifteen years ago)

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