Joe's Big Toe

Richard Haswell has pre­vi­ously been known as “Rhu­barb” and “G for Gnome”. For his latest album, how­ever, he has ditched the monik­ers and is using his real name. This move reflects the over­all feel of the album. It is accom­plished and grown-up, and his twenty self-released album exper­i­ence shines through.

The album starts slowly. The first track, Mag­netic North, is sparse and quiet, and it feels a bit like you’re sit­ting in his liv­ing room, listen­ing to him play­ing his new song — there’s a sense of trep­id­a­tion, as though he’s con­cerned you’re not going to like it. As the short song con­tin­ues, though, his con­fid­ence seems to build. Which is good news, because the second song has guts. A solid drum loop pro­pels the song for­ward, and Haswell plays a repet­it­ive, Stereophonics-esque melody. What really stands out in this track though is the e-bowed lead gui­tar, which clashes beau­ti­fully with the rest of the instru­ments. By track three though, Haswell is begin­ning to show off his true colours.

There’s a sense of des­pond­ency across the album, a post-apocalyptic sort of feel, par­tic­u­larly in Loop & Lil, track five, which would not have soun­ded out of place halfway through a God­speed You! Black Emperor track. A few seconds after it fin­ishes though, Haswell launches into a more melodic, slightly more upbeat num­ber, and that e-bowed lead gui­tar is back again. as the album starts to wind down in the final few tracks. “Ditch those Beatles records, and buy some Neil Young”, advises Haswell in Post Goldrush Blues, a song lament­ing the death of music. I doubt anyone’s going to be singing “ditch those Neil Young records, and buy some Richard Haswell” in twenty years time, partly because it’s two syl­lables too long, but if you were to walk past my house on a quiet, rainy even­ing, twenty years from now, you might hear Mag­netic North, not South­ern Man, drift­ing out from my CD player.