H Hawkline: Milk for Flowers review – affecting depth and beauty

Cardiff-born polymath Huw Evans’s first four albums as H Hawkline were marked by opaque lyrics performed in a slightly detached style. His first release in six years represents quite a departure, then, with many of the songs here contemplative reactions to the loss of his mother in 2018, delivered in a voice weighted with emotion that recalls Euros Childs of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. Longtime consigliera Cate Le Bon is on production duties, and with its surfeit of ideas Milk for Flowers has much common with her most recent album, 2022’s Pompeii.

With the exception of the upbeat Plastic Man, which is perhaps how Super Furry Animals covering Madness’s The Sun and the Rain might sound, nothing here is particularly immediate, the muted hooks taking time to worm their way into one’s affections. There’s plenty of variety, though. Denver builds from skeletal beginnings to a lushly orchestrated climax; powerful closer Empty Room finds Evans backed by piano and pedal steel; Athens at Night dabbles in seductive synthpop. Lyrically, there’s an unmistakable yearning throughout, from the opening track’s “I miss you so much” in. An affecting album of depth and beauty.