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When Hawksley Workman released Between The Beautifuls earlier this year, it was to tremendous critical response and fans justifiably awestruck at the singer’s sudden turn. Where once the singer found new innovative and fantastic ways to intermingle spirits of romance both high and low brow with garish electronics and hooks that had a habit of catching you when you weren’t looking, Between The Beautifuls saw him spontaneously changing directions into distinctly and unmistakably classic rock-sounding provinces. Suddenly Bruce Springsteen became the reference that Hawksley began garnering as critics wondered if Between The Beautifuls was the first shot in what would be the singer’s mature sound.

They’d be wrong however. See, in Hawksley Workman’s case, the aesthetic is part of the thrill for the singer, but the act is the thing he lives for and, with Los Manlicious, he’s proven without saying so that the ’mature sound’ was just another act of persona piracy and he’s grown bored with it – so he’s going to move on.

From the first crash of “When You Gonna Flower,” Hawksley Workman sounds notice in no uncertain terms that he’s rewritten his character again. Now appearing for the first time with a shorn head in the liner photos and with enormous (as well as enormously distorted) guitars dominating the songs, Los Manlicious is the singer’s presentation of a much more robust Hawksley Workman. On first listen, the brain recoils instinctively at the song’s in-your-face guitar licks and Hawksley’s hyper-masculine vocal delivery, but listeners find themselves reaching to hear it again as it fades because the difference between that one song alone and anything the singer has done previously is enormous and instantly attractive. While Hawksley has always commanded attention because his almost vaudevillian vocal delivery is just so alien; with “When You Gonna Flower,” the singer doesn’t ask politely for or command attention, he just reaches out and takes it.

While the heavy power chording of the intro track doesn’t continue throughout the record, the attention-grabbing spirit does. As Manlicious progresses, Hawksley Workman tries on the staple sounds of Eighties rock royalty including (but not limited to) The Police (“Kissing Girls” and “It’s A Drug”), The Cure (“Prettier Face”). The Eagles (“In The Bedroom In The Daytime”) and Duran Duran (“Lonely People”) – cat-birding each one but also injecting a bit of himself into each as well – and reinventing his image again (including, in a self-reflexive moment, re-working “The City Is A Drag” and “Oh You Delicate Heart” from Between The Beautifuls) step-by-step in the process. It’s actually pretty cool to hear each track on the record take the singer another step out of what listeners have come to expect from the singer, even from the songs they might recognize.

It’s also important to note that, on records previous, Hawksley Workman has always gotten listeners to fall in love with him by keeping a certain abstract romanticism close at hand so that, even when he’s coyly asking a girl to strip tease for him for example, he still comes off as sweet and a little chased. That romance is abandoned on Los Manlicious in favor of the singer asking point blank for S-E-X (the “Lipstick makes you fuck like a disaster” line in “In My Blood” should be proof enough) and by the closing “Fatty Wants To Dance” he’s slipped totally into Prince mode as he sleazes his way out onto the dance floor accompanied by a carousing bass line, gang choral refrains and a wah guitar that’s instant panty remover. While the idea of subtlety has always been one of the tools that Hawksley Workman has used to the greatest advantage, he doesn’t bother here and that omission is remarkably tantalizing rather than off-putting.

That said, Los Manlicious is about as far from anything fans have heard from Hawksley Workman before as he’s ever been. It’s dirty, it’s carnal and totally lacking in the sort of artifice we’ve come to expect from the singer. Even so, it’s not unwelcome in the slightest; as “Fatty Wants To Dance” fades, listeners will be reaching for the repeat button to have the singer do it to them again.

Artist:
http://www.hawksleyworkman.com
http://www.myspace.com/hawksleyworkman