34. Lady's Bridge

34. Lady's Bridge, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2007)

This is a placeholder for an entry to come in my Top 125 Albums of the 2000s, which I selected at the end of 2009. This blog has been dormant since autumn 2010, and my intention is to finish the final 45 entries as originally selected despite the distant vantage point and my opinions having changed in the interim. 

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57. Truelove's Gutter

57. Truelove's Gutter, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2009)

Sheffield songwriter Richard Hawley—former Longpigs guitarist and Pulp sideman—is one of those trusty musicians whose excellence comes from finding a suitable niche and treading that same ground over a span of albums, each of which has its strengths yet may seem interchageable to the casual listener.  His solo material focuses on sentimental lyrics set to lush, old-fashioned pop arrangements that suggest a common ground between Buddy Holly’s orchestral work; the early rock material on Sun Records of the Elvis, Scotty & Bill trio; and jazz-pop singers like Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Hartman.  After a mini-album and four full-lengths, including the Mercury Prize nominee Coles Corner (’06; see #84), Hawley adjusted his formula to produce his most masterful work of the decade.

The follow-up to Hawley’s poppiest album to date, Lady’s Bridge (’07), Truelove’s Gutter is a departure from the post-war dance-band crooner material that made helped to make his previous two albums so enjoyable.  Here, Hawley does not abandon his proven form so much as he dials it down and stretches it out; this results in some of the most intimate, quiet material of his catalog as well as its most epic numbers.  Hawley had done quiet material before—the bulk of ’02’s Late Night Final and the final third of Coles Corner focus on hushed, sparse compositions—yet on Truelove’s Gutter the calmness takes the form of meditations.  Expanding on Hawley’s usual beat-combo instrumentation, the songs are accented by a bevy of unusual, sometimes arcane devices: a singing saw, the cristal bachet, a glass harmonica, the waterphone, Tibetan singing bowls, the Ondes martenot (the sole electric instrument of that lot, an early keyboard producing theremin-like vibrations).  This non-traditional accompaniment lends a unique sonic undercurrent to the record; when the opening cut As the Dawn Breaks slowly builds from a swelling ambient hum, to name one instance, the organic instruments can easily be mistaken for modern electronics.  Many songs on the album have extended run times, the average going over six minutes.  Two pieces, Remorse Code and Don’t You Cry, are ten minutes long.  Remorse Code is the album’s centerpiece; a ruminative, opaque depiction of drug addiction, it caresses a single, gentle riff for its duration.  “The ship is wrecked/With all hands/Look to the reef/False lights from the land,” Hawley sings; the capsizing metaphor ends bluntly with a haunting chorus of “Those white lines/made your eyes wide.”  No mere indictment of another person’s follies, its lyric concludes with “I was likewise/In those white lines.”  Don’t Get Hung Up in Your Soul is the most desolate number, Hawley accompanied by an almost inaudible guitar and bass with the singing saw adding a far-off and lonesome tone.  The album’s general quietude emphasizes the power of its occasional crescendo: the blazing orchestral swell that erupts in the fourth minute of the otherwise quiet Soldier On, for example, is the album’s most stunning moment in part because it happens only once.  The songs of Truelove’s Gutter strip the bulk of filigrees from Hawley’s proven approach to pop songwriting, leaving its compositions laid bare.  Sometimes almost painfully frank yet thoroughly compelling precisely because of its intimacy, this fifth full-length album of Hawley’s is a striking achievement that will long resonate as a peak of his career.

Highlights: Remorse Code, Open Up Your Door, Soldier On, For Your Lover Give Some Time

Sublime bit: Those knowing refrains of Remorse Code and the mournful guitar solos surrounding them, especially the one from 5:34 to 7:33.

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84. Coles Corner

84. Coles Corner, Richard Hawley (Mute, 2005)

The son of working-class Sheffield musicians, Richard Hawley grew up playing guitar and toured with bar bands by age fourteen.  In the mid-’80s he played with Treebound Story, an indie-pop quartet reminiscent of Echo and the Bunnymen who recorded a handful of EPs and a Peel Session yet never managed to complete their debut LP.  The bulk of the group, including Hawley, then spent a stint as the Lovebirds; shortly thereafter, he joined local outfit Longpigs, with whom he had his first pronounced success outside of the region.  A relatively undistinguished Britpop group, they nonetheless earned significant commercial success in the UK before disbanding in ’99 after two albums.  Hawley’s next gig was as touring guitarist for fellow Sheffield mainstays Pulp.  Upon hearing some Hawley solo demos, Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and bassist Steve Mackey encouraged him to pursue them further; the result was Hawley’s ’01 eponymous debut EP.  Hawley would go on to release five full-lengths in the Aughts.  After over fifteen years of dutiful guitar work in other people’s groups, it seemed unlikely that Hawley would make a convincing frontman; more unexpected, though, was Hawley’s knack for writing lush, romantic ballads informed as much by post-war British popular music as by early rock and roll and country-and-western troubadours and delivered in a resonant croon that recalls not just Elvis Presley but pop vocal giants like Nat “King” Cole and Frank Sinatra.  Hawley’s music is also reminiscent of Nick Lowe’s Aughts work (see #103 and #117); Hawley’s luxuriant approach, though, transcends the tight, minimal techniques of Lowe’s romantic soul music.

For Hawley’s fourth solo release, Coles Corner, he gained his first appreciable distribution deal, with Mute Records, after the dissolution of his previous label, Setanta.  Like most of his Aughts works, the album is named for a real location in his beloved Sheffield; in this case, for a famed meeting place for blind dates.  The songs depict courtships truncated, interrupted, and unrequited.  The title track opens the album majestically with a lavish introduction by a seven-piece string section.  “I’m going downtown where there’s music/I’m going where voices fill the air/Maybe there’s someone waiting for me,” sings Hawley.  This loneliness continues on tracks like I Sleep Alone and Tonight; in the latter, he sings “Maybe I should call her/Ah, but then she’ll know.”  Hotel Room finds a couple acting as surrogate lovers, its narrator singing, “It’s time I met someone like you.”  The album’s finest piece is The Ocean, its orchestral swell accompanied by a towering, impassioned Hawley vocal.  Much of the album recalls ’50s-era vocal crooners; Hawley’s love for early British rock shows through, though, including the light skiffle beat of Just Like the Rain and I Sleep Alone.  Hotel Room features a swoon-inducing Hawaiian lap steel solo.  The album closes with a murmured take on the traditional number Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? and the late-night instrumental Last Orders, a piano piece that bleeds slowly into layers of ambient hum as if to wash away the pain of heartache.  The sentimental snapshots of Coles Corner make for Hawley’s first great record.

Highlights: The Ocean, Coles Corner, Just Like the Rain, Hotel Room

Sublime bit: The last 2:45 of The Ocean, beginning with Hawley’s final chorus that kicks in at 2:51.

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