If the Union Chapel, with its ornate stained glass centrepiece lit in spectral purple, wasn’t scenic enough, tonight it becomes a canyon, a meadow, a prairie and a punting lake. Such are the transportive skills of Hawley and Weller, two giants of evocative mood music stripped back to their bare acoustic bones for this War Child benefit; undoubtedly the show, of all of the Brits Week big-names-tiny-venues gigs, that will most often catch your breath in your throat.
In what at first looks like a monumental billing balls-up, Weller takes the stage first, but as his array of acoustic players settle into the pastoral folk of ‘Glide’ it’s clear he’s using his warm-up slot to go way off-piste. He’s here to premiere brand new songs, covering soft-hearted classics and showcasing his first soundtrack album for British boxing flick Jawbone – ‘The Ballad Of Jimmy McCabe’ sounds tonight like a sweet folk pony-trek through the pugilistic underworld. Weller’s set is peppered with moments of grit turned gorgeous; The Jam’s ‘Monday’ becomes a country lollop and ‘Dusk ‘Til Dawn’, “a song about giving up smoking”, makes quitting the cancer sticks sound, literally, like a walk in the park. The night is made, though, for his cover of Lennon’s stark and stunning ‘Love’ and a take on ‘Wild Wood’ where you can virtually feel the brambles scratch at your calves. The architecture shivers.
After War Child’s CEO has drummed up further contributions with heart-wrenching stories of a nine-year-old Iraqi girl’s horrific encounters with ISIS, Hawley is left to mop up the tears with his absorbing croon. With the help of one acoustic assistant, “the best harmonica player you’ll ever hear” and a cheap bossanova drum machine on his guitarist’s phone that he calls “the massive”, his trick is to transport us to mythical worlds: old Hollywood, seedy Lynchian gin joints, wild west homesteads. Once there, he regales us with homely kitchen sink dramas in a baritone as rich as Trump’s cabinet. ‘Ashes On The Fire’ is all burnt letters and recriminations while ‘For Your Lover’ is an aching torch song of household debt, borderline alcoholism and his wife’s overlong phone calls to his mother-in-law. He delves into murder balladry on the brooding psych-country of ‘Standing At The Sky’s Edge’, peopled with prostitutes, car thieves and killers, but Hawley is more about rough-hewn romance dotted with political discontent, such as on the sonorous ballroom beauty ‘Tonight The Streets Are Ours’, dedicated to “all the fuckwits who voted for Brexit, happy now?”, and the gorgeous desolations of ‘Lady Solitude’.
Corinne Bailey Rae joins him to add soft soul lustre to their new soundtrack collaboration ‘I Still Want You’ and take the lad on ‘After The Rain’, and Weller’s out on keyboards too by the slow-burn finale of The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the three of them alternating lines. A night of kings holding close-quarters court. Sublime.
