As the likes of the Super Furry Animals, Cerys Matthews and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci have proven, the Welsh accent is a gift for indie music – its melodiousness and intonation are able to jerk songs out of stultifying formulas. Huw Evans’ H Hawkline project is buoyed by the charm of its creator’s pronunciation, but it’s also full of idiosyncrasies. Evans is a one-time presenter of the Welsh-language music show Bandit (alongside Radio 1’s Huw Stephens and comedian Ellis James). He began making music at the turn of the decade, often collaborating with his one-time bandmate Cate Le Bon, whose mellow indie-folk he mirrors in his solo work. Yet his fourth record, I Romanticize, adds harsher, weirder grooves to the mix, which, thanks to their leisurely basslines and sonic babbling, sometimes call to mind a more blissed out early PiL. It is a hypnotic combination – twee but haunting, and familiar but strange.
