Hadnot Creek find grace in the grit on new album 'Leaving'

Hadnot Creek’s 'Leaving' is an album that flirt with melancholy, shares a drink, and stays up all night trading regrets. Robert Sawrey and his ever-changing ensemble offer up something spectral and unsettling, a soundtrack for those moments when the horizon is nothing but a rumour and every mile feels like an echo.

Right from the start, 'Leaving' feels haunted by its own silences. The record opens with 'I Don’t Love This World Anymore', a track that lumbers forward with the slow grace of someone dragging their last suitcase out the door. It’s an introduction that signals you’re not in for easy catharsis.

While many records in this lane revel in the comfort of nostalgia, 'Leaving' twists memory into something thorny and unstable. Tracks like 'It’s an Impossible World' stagger along like half-forgotten prayers, carried on ghostly shuffles and half-sighed confessions. Even when the arrangements threaten to swell, they pull back, leaving raw edges exposed.

'Don’t Poke the Sleeping Bear' uses its deceptively playful title to slip in a darker warning, the carnival-like organ turning an old adage into something more sinister and internal. Meanwhile, 'Mama I’m So Sorry' is so intimate it feels almost invasive to listen to.

But 'Leaving' is also unafraid to wander. Fiddle lines arrive unannounced like sudden rain showers, Mellotron sighs drift past like smoke, and tremolo-soaked guitars weave between country twang and shoegaze haze. It’s all carefully unvarnished, the production favouring the rough textures over polish, as if the songs were recorded directly onto an old reel found in a motel drawer.

Hadnot Creek have created a collection that refuses to mend the wound, choosing instead to sit beside it, pour a drink, and share the quiet. In a world obsessed with quick fixes, that patience feels radical, and also deeply human.