A Hawk & A Hacksaw Cervantine (LM Dupli-cation)
4/5
By: Stephen Maughan
In the little town of Albuquerque in New Mexico, US hometown of A Hawk & A Hacksaw, things can get a little bit hot. Trust me - I once spent 7 hours there in between Greyhound Bus journeys wandering the dusty streets with a blazing sun bearing down on me, looking for a swimming pool to cool off in. Eventually I found one, a tiny little place down a busy road and paid something ridiculous like 50 cents for an hour's swim. The pool was full of chubby Mexican kids splashing around, and the reason I mention this at all was not because A Hawk & A Hacksaw were there joining me in an afternoon dip, but their music was blasting away the whole time. It was my first encounter with this strange but optimistic mix of folk and gypsy music, and I was so taken aback that I asked the slacker pool attendant for the band’s name. “That's A Hawk & A Hacksaw dude, they're gonna be huge!”, he informed me.
Of course, they never were, but a great deal of credit must go to the husband and wife team of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost (key players in the band since its inception) for their startling achievements all the same. The duo have spent years soaking up traditional music from a vastly eclectic range of backgrounds, and rather than patronising it, they perform it with skill, integrity, and passion.
Cervantine finds them five albums on, as interesting and absorbing as ever, but with an added twist. The Eastern European influence still runs deep, but added to the mix is an upbeat Spanish flamenco feel. Remember that bit in Toy Story 3 where Buzz Ligthyear is mistakenly turned into “Spanish mode” and dances around like a love-crazed Latino lover? Buzz, if he was real, would feel right at home on this quite beautiful album, as would many diehard fans of Spanish and Baltic music, many of whom would have no idea that A Hawk & A Hacksaw, far from being a couple of Spanish or Romanian gypsies, are two talented American musicians.
Previously Barnes and Trost have relocated and spent years in Eastern Europe to record, but Cervantine was made and self-released at home in Alburquerque. Each track has a distinctive style and this is an album with many highlights. Two worthy of mention must be the atmospheric and brooding 'Lajtha Lassu’ and the light and stylish 'Española Kolo'.
The folding cardboard packaging is a nice touch too, and Cervantine will thrill anyone looking for authentic, labour-of-love music. I've been in Romania and seen this type of band play, and A Hawk & A Hacksaw succeed not only in imitating their style, but by bringing in their distinctive American backgrounds (Barnes was the drummer in Neutral Milk Hotel) to startling effect. As Barnes confessed in a recent US interview “We're rootless wanderers, affected by all kinds of music". A Hawk & A Hacksaw's great skill lies in not soaking up different musical genres, but by doing something uplifting and original with what comes out when they wring the sponge. Forget the over-hyped indie albums of recent weeks, Cervantine is the first must-buy record I've heard all year.
Artists in this article: A Hawk & A Hacksaw
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