Peter Horsfall - Nighthawks

The Guardian 80

(APP)

Edward Hopper painted it, Frank Sinatra conjured it with One for My Baby, Tom Waits anatomised it in forensic detail. Night-time loneliness in the big city is a genre of our time, and Peter Horsfall manipulates it with delicacy and skill. He’s a trumpeter as well as a singer, and although he doesn’t play on these tracks, there’s a good musician’s poise about his restrained, confidential style. Five of the seven songs are co-composed by him and Giacomo Smith, who plays beautiful alto saxophone here. The two of them together create one of the set’s highlights, a ravishing version of Duke Ellington’s Sunset and the Mockingbird.