Hawk Eyes come with talons out on their fourth record Advice, a welcome return from an informal hiatus which saw the Leeds band fall off the radar following 2015's acclaimed LP Everything Is Fine.
Picking up smoothly where they left off, the Yorkshiremen are back with familiar rock tunes fired through a sonic kaleidoscope, going left when the herd goes right. Packing genuinely fresh riffs – surprisingly scarce when you really think about it – the band veer from tarmacked highways onto paths less taken with a cavalier approach to what can be a dispiritingly stale genre.
Recalling the best of the likes of Lower Than Atlantis, 'Royal Trouble' bristles with riffs and hooks thrown together like a Picasso painting, simultaneously overwhelming and mesmerising – "I couldn't give a damn what you think" is a fitting lyric to the disjointed album opener, but elsewhere things tesselate a bit better. The band chose their singles well, with the no-holds-barred 'Never Lead Me' and the powerful 'Smokes' – featuring spoken word from actor and writer Richard O'Brien – both undisputed highlights, at home on the radio but heavy enough to stay underground and sweaty.
Elsewhere the band turn in a convincing Soundgarden impression on the spiralling title track and there's more than a whiff of Seattle air on 'Follow Me' and 'State of Opposition' too. It's hard to be derivative when it comes to a sound leftfield by definition but at times the innovation seems a little contrived, a conscious effort made to be 'interesting' rather than the organic sense of unchecked creativity which makes most of the record so engaging – 'New Greek Fire' and closer 'Keep 'Em Cold' fall foul to this, but they are certainly in the minority.
Advice sounds like the rock music you love left to brew overnight and, while some of the tracks may take you up a dead end, if you look at the world through Hawk Eyes you will find a side of town you'd never have dreamt of hitting and could never have found on your own.
Words - Joe Ponting
Hawk Eyes official
'Advice' is out now on Drakkar Entertainment