Hawksley Workman
March 24 (8pm). Winspear Centre (#4 Sir Winston Churchill Square). Tickets: $32.50, available at the Winspear box office (428-1414).

A Buddhist will tell you that suffering is caused by desire. Hawksley Workman will tell you the same thing, sort of—but that doesn’t mean he’s going to stop desiring.

“This psychotherapist guy once told me that if you bring along expectations in life, you also bring along cause for disappointment,” he says. “If you’re comfortable with a certain amount of dissatisfaction, you’ll never be disappointed—if you’re happy in between things.”

Hence the title of Workman’s new album, Between the Beautifuls. No, Workman isn’t dispensing sage wisdom from on high—he desires for plenty, and it’s obvious in his music, his persona, and even in his conversation—rarely will you hear one person use the word “lusty” so frequently. As in, “Songwriting for me is a relationship I’ve been in for 10 years.... I found my voice at 22; I remember that really well. All of a sudden I was able to write and sing from a place that was mine alone, and it was like a lusty love affair.”

And he goes on: “It was incredible. Every moment I sat down to write back in those days was a moment of discovery, and it was lusty and explosive.”

Sadly, as in any long-term relationship, the lust turned to routine.

“Realness starts to bleed in,” he says, “and the realness for me with songwriting was with every record having to renegotiate the passion and excitement. Not like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna wear dildos and it’s gonna be different,’ but just trusting myself to find something new.”

Workman’s career bears that out. His first album, 1999’s For Him and the Girls, is a bracingly well-put-together record for a 24-year-old, a diverse collection of rock, pop, and music-hall stomp. His output has been frequent but varied since then, from (Last Night We Were) The Delicious Wolves’ glam-pop bounce to Treeful of Starling’s folksy, singer/songwriter confessionals.

His new record is the closest thing to a concept album he’s done yet—and the concept, for lack of a better word, is disappointment, from the lost-love lament “Piano Blink” (“Let’s be happy/Even though we know we’re both done trying”) to the self-explanatory “The City Is a Drag” (“We’re burning out/We’re burning down/We’re burning out”).

“If you’re like me,” Workman says, “and you went to high school, you got the message that you go to university, sort yourself out, get a job, and then you live, you can coast.... But that arrival myth is really erroneous, and it’s kind of a shock to the system. I’ve been an adult for 12 years, let’s say, and I’ve waited for some level of comfort to enter my soul. And it hasn’t. I make a record and then it’s sort of done and it doesn’t define me anymore. Those moments are passed, and I’m left looking for something new.”