Wings of Desire (Black Vinyl LP)

Wings of Desire is the follow-up to Hemingway's acclaimed 2023 debut album Strangers Again, which was bursting with '50s crooner and '60s rock-and-roll romance. The project began while Hemingway was living in London, immersed in the post-punk and garage-rock scenes there; when the Covid pandemic struck, he took the opportunity to create a studio project with which he could experiment with other musical directions, a new persona, and a more personal and honest mode of songwriting. "I was trying to write about things like love, where I hadn't been able to in the past,' he says. The name Hemi Hemingway was chosen as a nod to his Māori heritage, with an intention to express his connection to an identity from which he has often felt forcibly detached.

Wings of Desire combines the romantic '50s and '60s influences that are familiar to Hemi Hemingway with a newfound obsession with gothy '80s post-punk and New Romantic. There are sublimely dramatic, indulgent moments ("Wings of Desire", "Promises", "If Love Is A Winter's Day"), juxtaposed with slinky, sultry, pulsing ones ("This City's Tryna Break My Heart", "Long Distance Lover", "(To Be) Without You"). Hemingway's baritone can pivot from sweet and vulnerable to husky and dangerous. The opening title track is a heady cloud of desire, yearning and regret, with its sax, synth and piano leading to a transcendent chorus. Meanwhile, the woozy and beckoning synths of "Desiree" soundtrack an ode to the innocent, clumsy, yet all-consuming version of love that came with youth: "When did we become the grown-ups?" Hemingway laments. Then there's the playful sexiness of "Long Distance Lover", with its hip-loosening bassline and Hemingway's smouldering vocals navigating the re-ignition of desire between lovers who have grown distant.