Richard Hawley, Hammersmith Apollo, London, review: Ruminations on love and loss leave the crowd enraptured

Hawley’s weathered croon adds to the vulnerability of his nakedly romantic couplets

Richard Hawley’s northernness courses through his songs

“It’s OK, we’re from the north”, Richard Hawley reassures before he’s even struck a note, lest anyone forget that the bequiffed, double denim-clad troubadour before them does a great impression of a one-man Sheffield tourist board.

Even without his infamously disarming onstage patter (“if this fucker doesn’t get you down, nothing will”), Hawley’s northernness courses through his songs, which are invariably sentimental ruminations on love and loss, desire and guilt.

Eighth collection Hollow Meadows (once again named after a South Yorkshire landmark) recalls the luxuriance of breakthrough Coles Corner, and provides tonight’s emotional sucker punches. Piano ballad "Tuesday PM", a blunt recounting of a relationship long-since disintegrated, is worthy of Nick Cave, while "What Love Means", about his daughter leaving home, is devastating in its simplicity.

His croon, as well-worn and comforting as an old leather boot, has weathered slightly, yet it only adds to the vulnerability when he sings such nakedly romantic couplets as “you’re precious to me/like Blake’s poetry” on the rockier "Heart of Oak".

“Text me when you get home,” he says before "The Ocean"’s squall of noise crashes over everyone, sending people for the exits emotionally spent, yet enraptured.