Tag: House Of The Artist

Felix Hatfield released House Of The Artist at the end of July and with all the summer frolics, I’m only just reviewing it. Which has its benefits – I’ve played it rather more, I’ve listened to it both loosely in the background and as closely as though poring over a musical text – and I think I’ve finally worked out how to write a review of this fairly surreal artist.

You’ll gather from the above that Hatfield is no ordinary musical artist … and he’s not just a musical artist – the album cover is one of Hatfield’s paintings. There’s also a photo of him sitting on a settee, guitar on his lap and a banjo next to him – the banjo’s body a clock face with old fashioned numbers – an image that instantly suggested Dali’s melting clocks.

There are places you want something easy and standard – muzak in a shopping centre or paintings to relax you in a hospital for example. That stuff is diametrically opposite to Hatfield’s territory and style. A lot of new music passes my ears, so to hang in the memory as a glorious track is a reasonable feat and suggests something that is far from average. Since its release in 2020, ‘That Kiss’, off Hatfield’s False God remains one of the songs that has hung in my mind as a great track.

I suspect there’s at least one track on here that will do the same – ‘Weepin’ Willow’ will have you in tears if you listen to it thoughtfully. ‘Bound To Lose (Sleep)’ may be another; the opening four lines are:

“I caught you falling from a star
Exploding with desire
I kissed you neath the waterfall
While heaven caught fire”

Coleridge suggested that good prose uses words in their best order – and that poetry has the best words in the best order. They develop a meaning and a weight that is more than their ordinary meaning – have a listen to ‘T-shirt’ to hear how Hatfield develops imagery of human relationships from simple words. These are juxtaposed on a song with a catchy refrain and a simple arrangement, the kind of thing that you think you’d easily create. Lyrically there is intrigue, like rhyming “medium” with “tedium”, a line which jumps out about being “don’t show me how they locked you inside a fridge” or a tweak about being “up ship’s creek”; musically the piano rolls along with what I suspect is a fuzzy harmonica in the background. The whole combines into a song that you might think you easily create but, actually, you wouldn’t. As it says in the song “I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve got the T-shirt”.

How come Hatfield isn’t across everyone’s radar. My experience of playing his music to others is that not everyone listens i.e. listens, you know properly, engaging those parts of the brain that want something more than a pretty melody and a catchy chorus. If you do, you’ll hear something rather more than a piano you’d play in the church hall (the mix pulls it to the back) and a grizzled vocal; you’ll find something rather more sophisticated and more surreal.

Try ‘Weepin’ Willow’ below; then try the other tracks I’ve mentioned. Then listen to ‘Purple Skull’ – it’s not a ‘gateway track’ to Hatfield but it may be the most surreal on House of the Artist in lyric, melody and arrangement.

I’m not sure Hatfield does performance, (I’ve don’t think I’ve ever seen gigs on his website) so you’ll have to settle for closing out the external noise in your life and listening to the album, its understated arrangements and the lyrics on the songs and the sleeve.

And to finish? There’s a long article on Hatfield’s website. Here’s the first two paragraphs:

“…some artists defy easy categorization; some art is hewn less from the stones of our daily lives than from the bloody heart of the artist, as personal as fingerprints, as strange as daisies, as intimate as a first love or a childhood trauma. This art can shock, inspire, comfort, frighten or amuse, but it can’t be ignored, because there is nothing like it in heaven or earth. 

 But it can change lives, this art – even save them. Because something in the uniqueness and strangeness manages to touch our common strangeness, our shared uniqueness – that great human paradox – building bridges between disparate souls, communicating to the lost, assuaging the bereaved, giving wild and romantic companionship to the lonely and wandering. This is true of the art of the many-named, big-hearted, roguish and heroic songwriter who many know as Felix Hatfield.”

Those are some of the words of the poet, musician and bartender Will Sternberg. If that’s your kind of writing, House Of The Artist is your kind of album.

Mike Wistow

Artist’s website: http://www.felixhatfield.com

‘Weepin’ Willow’: