Wherein the nation’s favourite ‘50s throwback makes a welcome return.
The ascent of Richard Hawley has proven to be one of the most enjoyable narrative strains offered by UK music over the last 18 months. A session-track hod-carrier for most of his career, the release in 2005 of Cole’s Corner, his third solo LP, marked a massive turning point in the Yorkshireman’s fortunes – earning him a Mercury nomination (and an on-stage admission from eventual winners the Arctic Monkeys that he’d “been robbed”), a Man of The Year award from Arena magazine, and a commendably lofty chart position.
Not bad for a self-confessed “speccy mong with a hairlip from Pitsmoor.”
Anyone beguiled by Cole’s Corner’s warm, backward-looking atmosphere, and its determined grounding in run-down and forgotten corners of Sheffield, will be delighted to hear that Lady’s Bridge (the path that links the poor part of town, apparently, to the houses on the hill) is a thematic and stylistic sequel.
Everything that made the earlier album sound so fresh – the slap-back guitar; the rockabilly excursions; the tremulous, out-of-time vocals; the King Of The Road sentiments – are all present and correct. What’s changed, however, is the budget.
If Cole’s Corner was a monochrome Saturday afternoon matinee, Lady’s Bridge, with its galloping string sections (‘Our Darkness’, ‘Tonight, The Streets Are Ours’) and elegant jazzy embellishments (a special mention to the piano details on ‘Roll River Roll’) is a Technicolor Friday night feature.
Critics may wonder if there’s a bit too much of the Hovis Ad aesthetic hovering around Hawley’s work – if the ale-supping, whippet-keeping, old Labour affectations are as much a construct as Damon Albarn’s mid-90’s Mockney – but they should chill out. Of course, Hawley’s Sheffield is an imagined one – but it’s such a warm, embracing and communal-minded creation that, for 49 minutes, you’ll feel like upping sticks and moving there too.