Photo: Press
“The next songs we are going to play for you are going to be about relationships gone bad, darkness and euthanasia.” Hardly the sentence that’s likely to fill you with joy on a somewhat thunderous Monday evening at Moth club, yet H. Hawkline (Huw Gwynfryn Evans) with his dead pan Welsh humour, off kilter indie, folk songs and what appears to be his grandmothers dressing gown, (in a shocking revelation later in the night we discover it’s his sisters’) turns the morose into the magnificent.
Opposing duality seems to be the theme, as dark subject matter is told through the lens of danceable melodies and almost pop-centric hooks. It’s a skill that Evans perfected in his most recent album and certainly one he can recreate on stage and perhaps the reason why he is one of the few people in this world who can wear an all white outfit with a gold chain, accessorise with a dainty, floral gown and still make it work.
This duality even seeps into his wit. It took almost the entire set for a smile to grace the lips of Huw Gwynfryn Evans and even when it does, it’s aimed at his band, not the audience. When he first enters the stage and sternly warns the sound engineer to, “at least start off right.” It’s hard not to feel like a teacher has just entered a classroom and much like when a strict teacher tells a joke, no one is really sure if they are allowed to laugh. The stoicism lasts long but the uncertain audience does not and soon his sarcastic, to-the-point humour has the audience laughing hard and often.
At the end of the set, they do away with an encore and Evans invites back the majority of supporting act Younghusband to perform a cover of Welsh folk singer Meic Stevens. Certainly not one to hide from his Welsh heritage, the song is sung in Cymraeg, and although seven musicians on an intimate stage was a logistical nightmare, they certainly managed to achieve bringing Wales to Hackney. Noson wych.
