Goldhawks
Goldhawks release their debut single, Running Away, on Vertigo on December 7th. The single comes amid a busy autumn’s touring for the band, who’ve just returned from a brace of shows at CMJ in New York and now head back to the UK for a string of dates following their sold-out residency at London’s Ginglik which attracted fellow artists such as Maximo Park, Maccabees, and Golden Silvers.
It only takes a few bars of Running Away to tell you that you are in the presence of Big Music. This west London five-piece are not in the business of half measures, not interested in anxious, apologetic, half-baked landfill indie. Goldhawks make their ambitions clear from the start: the giant opening guitar riff sets its cap at arenas, not the toilet circuit. When the song ends three-and-a-half minutes later, you’re left in no doubt as to the scale of their ambitions.
Two years ago, under his own name, Bobby Cook was releasing a single, Deja Vu, whose sweeping strings and acoustic shuffle saw him quickly bracketed alongside the likes of Laura Marling, Jamie T and Mumford and Sons on the dawning London skewed-folk scene. Already, people whose curiosity had been aroused by Deja Vu’s gentle acoustica found themselves faced with a very different prospect live.
“The songs were getting much heavier,” Bobby remembers. “On one hand, I was drawing on a passion for Ryan Adams. But then I’d find myself being inspired by filmic and more textured music. And it was obvious to everyone that this big, majestic sound wasn’t just down to me.”
Even so, they took ages to find the right name for the band. And when they found it, they realised the inspiration had been under their feet all the time: Goldhawk Road, the busy London street Bobby and his brother and bandmate Jack had grown up on.
More like revivalist meetings than gigs, Goldhawks’ live performances have reminded older hands of the zealotry and ferment of Echo and The Bunnymen. To their own generation, Goldhawks represent something that can often seem like it’s in very short supply indeed: music that has nothing to do with striking attitudes or ticking commercial boxes, and everything to do with what Bobby calls his only reason for making music in the first place: because he has to, he’s “got no choice”, as he puts it; and because “making a happy song out of a sad situation” is both the hardest challenge and the greatest reward.