Richard Hawley is a veteran of Pulp, the perverse Sheffield-based Brit-poppers who bowed out a few years ago with the Scott Walker-produced We Love Life. Walker seems to have rubbed off on Hawley, and Coles Corner is chock-a-block with majestically depressed music. The deliberate pacing and prominence of the ride cymbal in numbers such as "Ocean" suggests an endless downpour, a fact of life for citizens of Northern England. Hawley doesn't aim for the florid and weirdly uplifting existential dread that Walker practised. His voice isn't so godlike, for one thing, but he's a fine crooner nonetheless, and any number of tracks from Coles Corner would fit neatly on Walker's relatively lighthearted Til the Band Comes In album. Hawley is also much simpler lyrically. In "Tonight", he weighs up some limited options over a repetitive, spectral guitar arpeggio. "Oh tonight-I got it really bad/Maybe I'll go out walking/Don't feel like staying home/Might take the car up to the hills and watch the city lights below". You get the picture. In "Wading Through the Water", he strikes a balance between early Johnny Cash and Tex Ritter, but it comes off like a goof on the Tindersticks. Things don't get any more English. This lovely album is certainly for the wee small hours, but Hawley doesn't opt for the more obvious tropes that other adult-oriented performers tend to cop. He's no Sinatra manqué.

Georgia Straight, September 2005