Richard Hawley, Brighton Dome, gig review: providing a feeling of community to a nation needing it

“That’s one of my favourite new songs,” Richard Hawley says of “I Still Want You”, with its life-long lovers who still “move our backs like a twist of smoke”. “It’s about you, you see,” he says, looking fondly at his fans at his tour’s official start. “I thought I was going to retire.” A heckle breaks the sentimental moment, but in his two years away Hawley has been through the mincer, a slipped disc immobilising him for months, after touring with his leg in plaster thanks to an earlier fall. Life’s troubles and wonders have always kept this kind Sheffield songwriter close. “I get the feeling we’re gonna ‘ave it tonight,” he now decides, honestly relieved.

Greater evils are considered in the title track of Standing at the Sky’s Edge (2012), written in dismay at the early scorched earth impact of Tory cuts. The music is a low, echoing shiver, the words about desperate individuals piercingly clear, the light blue. He’s more lead guitarist than balladeer tonight, favouring rasping psychedelic pop over the new Hollow Meadows’ sepulchral, warming emotion. Either way, he provides a feeling of decent community, in a nation needing it.